"Jack
That's great news, Jay. However, we strongly recommend using version 7 until version 8 is officially released in March 2015. Java 8 is currently a beta release. I don't know if downgrading is a problem in Ubuntu, or if you have the same glitches in Linux as Windows for that matter. If you don't have any problems, feel free to stick with Java 8.
P.S. That guide should come in handy for me. I've got an old laptop running Ubuntu but it never ran Java. I'll get iGP going on it so I can see for myself how it works. Cheers!
I think java 8 was released in March 2014. And is the default download option on java.com. Java 9 will start the beta release in 2015.