Hello Linux Geeksters. As you may know, Minecraft is a sandbox indie game, enabling the users to build beautiful buildings, but also some structures to protect against nocturnal monsters.
The latest version available is Minecraft 1.8, which has been released a while ago, coming with a lot of changes. For information about this release, see the changelog.
In this article I will show you how to install Minecraft 1.8 on Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn, Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr, Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin, Linux Mint 17 Qiana, Linux Mint 13 Maya, Pinguy OS 14.04, Elementary OS 0.3 Freya, Elementary OS 0.2 Luna, Deepin 2014, Peppermint Five, LXLE 14.04, Linux Lite 2.0 and other Ubuntu derivative systems.
So, to install Minecraft 1.8 on Ubuntu and derivative systems, we have to install either OpenJDK:
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install openjdk-8-jre
Or Oracle Java:
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:webupd8team/java
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-installer
And download the Minecraft.jar launcher and exec it:
$ wget https://s3.amazonaws.com/Minecraft.Download/launcher/Minecraft.jar
$ java -jar Minecraft.jar