Eclipse 3.5 Galileo on Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 

Eclipse 3.5 (AKA Galileo) is the de facto standard for enterprise java development IDE. Eclipse on Linux platform is a perfect match with performance,proficiency and glory :-) .

In order to begin playing with eclipse, we need to do some configurations.

1. Install Sun Java JDK

#sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk

2. Make Sun’s Java as your default Java installation

By default, Ubuntu 9.04 ships with a Java distribution called ‘icedTea’ or Open JDK and its littlebit slow. In order to make sure your system has that installation, open terminal window and type

#java -version

it’ll print the java version you are using right now. If it is set to Open JDK, then you have to change it to Sun’s JDK.

#sudo update-alternatives --config java

Then select the installation with path /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/bin/java.

3. Search for a pretty icon for eclipse

Download this one

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vista-eclipse.png

Save it to your desktop

4. Download Eclipse Galileo

You can go to official site http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ and choose your edition, here I choose eclipse for JEE developers edition. This will be nearly 188MB in size.

Save it to your desktop

5. Extract eclipse

Open the terminal and execute

#cd ~/Desktop
#tar xzf eclipse-jee-galileo-SR1-linux-gtk.tar.gz (replace your downloaded file name here)
#sudo mv eclipse /opt/eclipse
#sudo mv Vista-eclipse.png /opt/eclipse
#cd /opt
#sudo chown -R root:root eclipse
#sudo chmod -R +r eclipse
#cd /opt/eclipse
#sudo chmod +x eclipse

Here I’m gonna install eclipse into /opt, because I want eclipse to be installed for multiple user environment.

5. Create an executable shell for eclipse

Open terminal, execute the commands:

#sudo touch /usr/local/bin/eclipse (this assumes that /usr/local/bin is in the path)
#sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/eclipse
#sudo gedit /usr/local/bin/eclipse

When file is opened with gedit, enter the following:

#!/bin/sh
export ECLIPSE_HOME=/opt/eclipse
$ECLIPSE_HOME/eclipse $*

6. Create GNOME menu item

Open Terminal, execute the following commands:

#sudo gedit /usr/share/applications/eclipse.desktop

Enter the following contents:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Eclipse
Comment=Eclipse Galileo IDE
Exec=eclipse
Icon=/opt/eclipse/Vista-eclipse.png
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=GNOME;Application;Development
StartupNotify=True

7. Initialise eclipse

Open Terminal, execute:

#/opt/eclipse/eclipse –clean

8. From now on, you can choose to run Eclipse from menu Applications->Programming->Eclipse