IntelliJ Idea on Alpine Linux

I need to use IntelliJ IDEA on my Alpine Linux laptop at university. However, IntelliJ IDEA requires the JetBrains Runtime, which is linked with glibc and is incompatible with systems that use musl libc.

The working solution for IntelliJ Idea 2024.1.2 is to set a musl libc Java runtime with the IDEA_JDK environment variable:

IDEA_JDK=/usr/lib/jvm/java-21-openjdk /opt/idea-IC-252.23892.409/bin/idea.sh

Note

If a third-party plugin does not work, consider switching to a different OpenJDK version. For example, OpenJDK 21 supports IdeaVim but not GitHub Copilot.

Reference

• JetBrains Runtime on musl-based systems