OK this is what the gradle folks told me/us: https://discuss.gradle.org/t/gradle-wants-as-java-version-openjdk-11-even-if-a-newer-version-is-installed/45254/6
Gradle itself would just use the Java from your JAVA_HOME or as fallback from PATH (given you use a version that is compatible with your Gradle version, otherwise it will most likely fail to execute later on). ~ so, the installation by apt-get should have detected that I had set JAVA_HOME and the included the JDK in my PATH. In case someone stumbles on the same problems, runs into the same thread, here are the quick steps about how to install gradle on Linux (without gregorian chanting " ... and if you use Windows, ... and if you use MacOS, ..."): 1) look for the installation file at: https://gradle.org/install/ right now: $ date Tue 28 Mar 2023 06:14:52 PM UTC it was: https://services.gradle.org/distributions/gradle-8.0.2-all.zip 2) set the directory where you want to keep the installation file 3) download the file to §2 using wget, curl or your browser 4) choose an <installation directory> 5) unzip -d "§4: which ever <installation directory> you chose" "§2: path to the installation file <gradle-8.0.2-all.zip>" 6) set your: PATH="<installation directory>/bin"$PATH 7) test everything is OK: $ which gradle <installation directory>/bin/gradle $ gradle --version ERROR: JAVA_HOME is not set and no 'java' command could be found in your PATH. Please set the JAVA_HOME variable in your environment to match the location of your Java installation. $ JAVA_HOME="<...>/GraalVM/graalvm-ce-java19-22.3.0" PATH="${JAVA_HOME}/bin:$PATH" which javac javac -version which java java -version <...>/GraalVM/graalvm-ce-java19-22.3.0/bin/javac javac 19.0.1 <...>/GraalVM/graalvm-ce-java19-22.3.0/bin/java openjdk version "19.0.1" 2022-10-18 OpenJDK Runtime Environment GraalVM CE 22.3.0 (build 19.0.1+10-jvmci-22.3-b08) OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM GraalVM CE 22.3.0 (build 19.0.1+10-jvmci-22.3-b08, mixed mode, sharing) $ gradle --version Welcome to Gradle 8.0.2! Here are the highlights of this release: - Improvements to the Kotlin DSL - Fine-grained parallelism from the first build with configuration cache - Configurable Gradle user home cache cleanup For more details see https://docs.gradle.org/8.0.2/release-notes.html ------------------------------------------------------------ Gradle 8.0.2 ------------------------------------------------------------ Build time: 2023-03-03 16:41:37 UTC Revision: 7d6581558e226a580d91d399f7dfb9e3095c2b1d Kotlin: 1.8.10 Groovy: 3.0.13 Ant: Apache Ant(TM) version 1.10.11 compiled on July 10 2021 JVM: 19.0.1 (GraalVM Community 19.0.1+10-jvmci-22.3-b08) OS: Linux 5.10.0-18-amd64 amd64 $ gradle --help To see help contextual to the project, use gradle help USAGE: gradle [option...] [task...] -?, -h, --help Shows this help message. ... $
