System Requirements

Introduction

Aspose.Slides for Java is a standalone library: it does not need Microsoft PowerPoint or Microsoft Office. It is a single JAR file, published in Aspose’s Maven repository. The JAR file contains only Java classes and resources, with no native libraries, and it declares no dependencies on other libraries. The same file therefore runs on every operating system and processor for which a supported Java runtime is available.

This article lists the supported Java versions and operating systems and the font library and fonts that Linux needs, and ends with a short program that checks your setup. To add the library to a project, see Installation.

Supported Java Versions

Aspose.Slides for Java runs on Java 8 or later, with a JDK or a JRE. This includes the long-term support releases Java 8, 11, 17, 21, and 25, and later releases such as Java 26 and Java 27. The Java runtime can come from any vendor, for example Eclipse Temurin, Amazon Corretto, Oracle, or the OpenJDK packages of a Linux distribution.

Aspose.Slides needs no JVM options, such as --add-opens, on any of these versions. On Java 11, the JVM prints a warning that begins with “WARNING: An illegal reflective access operation has occurred”; the warning does not affect the result.

The Maven project and the commands in Installation need JDK 11 or later. With Java 8, compile and run your program as shown in Check Your Setup.

Supported Operating Systems

Because the JAR file contains no native code, Aspose.Slides for Java runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS, on any processor architecture that the Java runtime supports, such as x64 and ARM64. The Java runtime is the only requirement on Windows. On Linux, Java’s font support also needs the font library and fonts described in Linux.

Linux

Aspose.Slides for Java lays out and draws text with the font support of the Java runtime. On Linux, that support requires the fontconfig library and at least one installed font. Official container images of Linux distributions often have neither. Without them, the first example in Create Presentations fails when it saves the presentation, leaves an empty file, and reports this error:

java.lang.RuntimeException: Fontconfig head is null, check your fonts or fonts configuration

The official eclipse-temurin container images, for Ubuntu and for Alpine Linux, already contain fontconfig and the DejaVu fonts, so nothing needs to be installed on them. On other systems, install the packages below. The Debian, Ubuntu, and Red Hat commands use sudo; in a Dockerfile, run them in a RUN instruction without sudo. The DejaVu fonts are enough for Aspose.Slides to run; the fonts that your presentations use are covered in Fonts.

Debian and Ubuntu

If you install Java from the Debian or Ubuntu packages with the default apt-get settings, as the command in Installation does, the Java packages also install the fontconfig library, the DejaVu fonts, and the HarfBuzz library that these Java packages need, and nothing else is required.

With a Java runtime from another source, such as an Eclipse Temurin archive, install fontconfig and the DejaVu fonts:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y fontconfig fonts-dejavu-core

A Dockerfile often installs the Debian or Ubuntu Java packages, such as openjdk-21-jdk-headless or default-jdk-headless, with the --no-install-recommends option, which skips all three. Install fontconfig and the DejaVu fonts with the command above, and install HarfBuzz as well:

sudo apt-get install -y libharfbuzz0b

Without HarfBuzz, these Java packages print Please install the openjdk-*-jre package or recommended packages for openjdk-*-jre-headless, and saving fails with an UnsatisfiedLinkError that reports that libharfbuzz.so.0 cannot be opened.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux

The java-<version>-openjdk-headless packages of Red Hat Enterprise Linux do not install the fontconfig library. Install it together with the DejaVu fonts:

sudo dnf install -y fontconfig dejavu-sans-fonts

The full java-<version>-openjdk packages install fontconfig and fonts as dependencies, and so do the Amazon Corretto packages of Amazon Linux 2023, such as java-21-amazon-corretto-headless.

Alpine Linux

In a Dockerfile based on Alpine Linux, install fontconfig and the DejaVu fonts:

RUN apk add --no-cache fontconfig ttf-dejavu

On current Alpine releases, ttf-dejavu installs the font-dejavu package. Install Java with the openjdk<version>-jre or openjdk<version>-jdk package, such as openjdk25-jdk. The openjdk<version>-jre-headless packages of Alpine Linux do not contain Java’s font library, so with them the program fails with UnsatisfiedLinkError: no fontmanager in system library path, even when fonts are installed.

Fonts

For text to render with the right fonts and metrics, the fonts that your presentations use, or suitable substitutes, must be installed on the system or loaded by your application. See Deploy Fonts, Font Substitution, and Custom Fonts.

Check Your Setup

To check that the library and its requirements are in place, run a program that saves a presentation and renders a slide to an image. Saving and rendering use the font support of the Java runtime, which is what the Linux requirements above provide.

Save the code below as CheckSetup.java in the folder that contains the Aspose.Slides JAR file. To download the JAR file, see Use the JAR File without Maven.

import com.aspose.slides.*;

public class CheckSetup {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Presentation presentation = new Presentation();
        try {
            // Add a rectangle with text to the first slide and save the presentation.
            ISlide slide = presentation.getSlides().get_Item(0);
            IAutoShape shape = slide.getShapes().addAutoShape(ShapeType.Rectangle, 50, 50, 400, 100);
            shape.getTextFrame().setText("Hello, Aspose.Slides!");
            presentation.save("hello.pptx", SaveFormat.Pptx);

            // Render the slide at one pixel per point and save the image.
            IImage image = slide.getImage(1f, 1f);
            try {
                image.save("hello.png", ImageFormat.Png);
            } finally {
                image.dispose();
            }
        } finally {
            presentation.dispose();
        }
    }
}

With JDK 11 or later, run the program in that folder with the command below. If your JAR file has a different name, change the name in the commands.

java -cp aspose-slides-26.10-jdk8.jar CheckSetup.java

With Java 8, or on a system that has only a JRE, compile the program with javac from a JDK and then run the compiled class. On Linux and macOS, run:

javac -cp aspose-slides-26.10-jdk8.jar CheckSetup.java
java -cp aspose-slides-26.10-jdk8.jar:. CheckSetup

On Windows, run the same javac command, and then run the class with a semicolon as the class path separator. Keep the quotes, so that PowerShell does not treat the semicolon as the end of the command: java -cp "aspose-slides-26.10-jdk8.jar;." CheckSetup.

The program adds a rectangle with text to the first slide and saves the presentation as hello.pptx with the save method. It then renders the slide with getImage and saves the result as hello.png with IImage.save in the ImageFormat.Png format. The scale factors of 1 render one pixel per point, so the default 720 × 540 point slide becomes a 720 × 540 pixel image, with the text visible inside the rectangle. Without a license, both files also carry an evaluation watermark; see Licensing. If a requirement is missing, the program stops with one of the errors described in Linux.

Development Tools

You can build applications that use Aspose.Slides with any JDK of a supported Java version. Use Apache Maven with Aspose’s Maven repository, as described in Installation, or any other build tool that can use a Maven repository. You can also add the JAR file to the class path of your IDE or build tool yourself.

FAQ

Do I need Microsoft PowerPoint installed for conversions and rendering?

No, PowerPoint is not required. Aspose.Slides is a standalone engine for creating, modifying, converting, and rendering presentations.

Does Aspose.Slides for Java need a display or a desktop environment on a Linux server?

No. Aspose.Slides does not need an X server or a display, so it runs on servers and in containers. On Linux, it needs only the font library and fonts described in Linux.

Which fonts are needed for correct rendering?

The fonts used in the presentation, or suitable substitutes, must be available. On Linux and macOS, install the font packages that your presentations need to get consistent rendering.

Why does a custom font render as a fallback or missing text on Linux?

If the font file has inconsistent or corrupted name-table entries, the Linux font-matching stack (FreeType/fontconfig) may select an invalid record, causing the font to be unresolved. Using a font version with corrected name-table records or installing a consistent replacement resolves the issue.

Installation