I'm using the package from aur on archlinux, same problem met. Add and env prefix like: env JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk freemind Because my freemind build by PKGBUILD on AUR is using java-8-openjdk, here I set the JAVA_HOME to that, I'm not sure what's that on ubuntu. But with the correct JAVA_HOME been set, the second problem mentioned by Michal should be fixed.