Choosing a JDK Base Image

Every Jenkins 8,793 release is published on several bases and two Java versions. Java 21 has been the minimum since weekly releases of January 2026 and LTS 2.555.1 (May 2026), which dropped Java 17; Java 25 is also supported. The Docker Hub 514 API lists each variant of 2.568.3 with its compressed size:

The Linux variants of Jenkins 2.568.3Groovy

HUB=https://hub.docker.com/v2/repositories/jenkins/jenkins/tags
curl -s "$HUB?page_size=100&name=2.568.3-lts" \
  | jq -r '.results[] | "\(.name) \(.full_size/1048576|floor) MB"' | sort

Output

2.568.3-lts 279 MB
2.568.3-lts-alpine 196 MB
2.568.3-lts-jdk21 279 MB
2.568.3-lts-jdk25 346 MB
2.568.3-lts-rhel-ubi9-jdk21 276 MB
2.568.3-lts-rhel-ubi9-jdk25 343 MB
2.568.3-lts-slim 248 MB

The default tags are Debian 13 319 with Eclipse Temurin 23,968 ; -slim drops packages you would otherwise have to patch; -alpine is smallest but uses musl libc, which some plugins' native tools dislike; -rhel-ubi9 suits organizations that standardize on Red Hat.

Unsuffixed tags such as 2.568.3-lts currently mean JDK 21 (note the identical size), but may follow a newer JDK in a later release; spell out -jdk21 or -jdk25 so the Java version changes only when you decide. Builds do not use the controller's Java: agents bring their own tools, so BookNest's Node 24 never goes into this image.

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