arduino on linux is actually a script that launches arduino via java. If you build arduino yourself there is no bundled java included which means it will use your distris java. If its java7, it will crash.

I am maintaining the Archlinux AUR PKGBUILD which use a trick to ensure arduino starts with java8:
https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/tree/arduino.sh?h=arduino

Would there be another option to include this into the arduino script? It should be distribution independant, so I do not know how its handled on different OS. Does anyone know how we could solve it? I think that should be possible.

@facchinm @cmaglie you possibly have an idea or tip?