I have installed openjdk-8-jre (which will get security updates on 18.04 LTS until 2021: https://blog.ubuntu.com/2019/04/19/announcing-openjdk-11-packages-in-ubuntu-18-04-lts) on my Ubuntu 18.04, so the latest launcher .deb installs fine. But removing openjdk-8-jre indeed also removes minecraft-launcher and installing the .deb also installs openjdk-8-jre again.
The launcher seems to depend on java 8, but the game mostly runs fine with newer versions of java. On most linuxes the launcher also defaults to not even using the installed java 8, because it sets the java executable path to /usr/bin/java.
The most future-proof option would be to improve compatability with newer versions of java and remove the dependency on specific versions of java.
Inge Neur
I have installed openjdk-8-jre (which will get security updates on 18.04 LTS until 2021: https://blog.ubuntu.com/2019/04/19/announcing-openjdk-11-packages-in-ubuntu-18-04-lts) on my Ubuntu 18.04, so the latest launcher .deb installs fine. But removing openjdk-8-jre indeed also removes minecraft-launcher and installing the .deb also installs openjdk-8-jre again.
The launcher seems to depend on java 8, but the game mostly runs fine with newer versions of java. On most linuxes the launcher also defaults to not even using the installed java 8, because it sets the java executable path to /usr/bin/java.
The most future-proof option would be to improve compatability with newer versions of java and remove the dependency on specific versions of java.