Below is some notes I've jotted down while trying to set it up in a new machine. I believed it was around June 2015 but I've updated it for Fedora 24 (Rawhide).
Installation.
$ sudo dnf install plantuml graphviz java-1.8.0-openjdk
If you want to get the latest pre-compiled PlantUML version, then you've to run it manually.
$ java -jar plantuml.jar -version
For those installation through distro's repository, there exists a shell script, '/usr/bin/plantuml' that set up all the necessary JAVA environment details for you.
$ file `which plantuml`
/usr/bin/plantuml: Bourne-Again shell script, ASCII text executable
Since PlantUML is using Graphiviz as its renderer, we need to verify that PlantUML can detect it.
$ java -jar plantuml.jar -testdot
The environment variable GRAPHVIZ_DOT has been set to /usr/bin/dot
Dot executable is /usr/bin/dot
Dot version: dot - graphviz version 2.38.0 (20140413.2041)
Installation seems OK. File generation OK
Another way is to check our PlantUML version.
$ java -jar plantuml.jar -version
PlantUML version 8027 (Sat Jun 20 18:13:59 MYT 2015)
(GPL source distribution)
OpenJDK Runtime Environment
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM
1.8.0_45-internal-b14
Linux
The environment variable GRAPHVIZ_DOT has been set to /usr/bin/dot
Dot executable is /usr/bin/dot
Dot version: dot - graphviz version 2.38.0 (20140413.2041)
Installation seems OK. File generation OK
Go generate our sample diagram with verbosity set (useful for detecting issues).
$ java -jar plantuml.jar -verbose sample.txt
(0.000 - 117 Mo) 114 Mo - PlantUML Version 8033
(0.074 - 117 Mo) 113 Mo - GraphicsEnvironment.isHeadless() true
(0.074 - 117 Mo) 113 Mo - Forcing -Djava.awt.headless=true
(0.074 - 117 Mo) 113 Mo - java.awt.headless set as true
(0.085 - 117 Mo) 113 Mo - Setting current dir: .
(0.085 - 117 Mo) 113 Mo - Setting current dir: /home/hojimi
(0.087 - 117 Mo) 112 Mo - Using default charset
(0.093 - 117 Mo) 112 Mo - Setting current dir: /home/hojimi
(0.099 - 117 Mo) 112 Mo - Setting current dir: /home/hojimi
(0.100 - 117 Mo) 112 Mo - Reading file: sample.txt
(0.100 - 117 Mo) 112 Mo - name from block=null
(0.728 - 117 Mo) 93 Mo - Creating file: /home/hojimi/sample.png
(0.776 - 117 Mo) 90 Mo - Creating image 121x126
(0.812 - 117 Mo) 90 Mo - Ok for com.sun.imageio.plugins.png.PNGMetadata
(0.860 - 117 Mo) 89 Mo - File size : 2131
(0.861 - 117 Mo) 89 Mo - Number of image(s): 1
The textual description of 'sample.txt' that produces that UML diagram.
$ cat sample.txt
@startuml
Alice -> Bob
Bob -> Alice
@enduml