We have not changed anything regarding startup / JRE path detection in the latest release.
Could it be that when you updated, a ‘Universal’ version of the plugin (without embedded JRE) was installed for some reason? To test the theory, you could download the Linux (or your respective platform) VSIX from our releases page, and install it manually to VS Code.
Alternatively, you can check the ~/.vscode/extensions folder to see the the version of the plugin installed, and all the distribution files that came with it. For example, for me on MacOS the folder is ~/.vscode/extensions/sonarsource.sonarlint-vscode-4.29.0-darwin-arm64, and when I check inside it contains the jre folder.
Thanks A LOT for helping us investigate 