How to install and start working with Eclipse

Install Eclipse

Download it and save it in your home\Documents folder.

Go to the eclipse download page and choose 'Eclipse IDE for C/C++ Developers' for your operating system (32-bit or 64-bit linux). Now download it to your Home/Documents folder.

Open a terminal (control+alt+t) and navigate to the folder to where you downloaded Eclipse (most likey Home/Downloads):

cd ~/Downloads

To unpack it for example to your Home/Documents folder, use this command (depending on the actual version your downloaded, this might needs to be slightly adapted):

tar -zxf eclipse-linuxtools-indigo-SR2-incubation-linux-gtk-x86_64.tar.gz -C ~/Documents

You can run it now from there, the '&' symbol avoids, that the terminal waits till the application is closed again:

cd ~/Documents/eclipse
./eclipse &

If you have not installed the OpenJDK or the Oracle JDK, you will be prompted to do so, before you can start Eclipse. Installation instructions for this you can find in the section below.

If you want to be able to find Eclipse in your dashboard search and also want the the Eclipse icon to appear in the dashboard, when it is running (not just a question mark), you need to create the following file and edit it:

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

Write the following information in that file and save it:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Eclipse
Comment=Eclipse IDE
Exec=/home/my-usr-name/Documents/eclipse/eclipse
Icon=/home/my-usr-name/Documents/eclipse/icon.xpm 
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=GNOME;Application;Development;
StartupNotify=true

Finally, do a clean command on Eclipse, then you should see the Icon in the taskbar and also find it using the dashboard search:

./eclipse -clean

Install OpenJDK or OracleJDK

to see what is installed already:

which java

and which version you are running:

java -version

If this shows, you already have Java JDK installed, then just skip this section and go on further down with the Eclipse Configuration. If you need to install open source java or oracle java, go ahead with the upcoming instructions:

Open JDK

The Open Source implementation of the Java Developer Kit is available at the Ubuntu Software Center or directly with apt-get. Compared to the Oracle version it is obviously open source, but comparably slower. It is up to you, what you prefer.

Search either for 'openjdk' in the Software Center and install it there or type in your console:

sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jdk

Oracle JDK

The Oracle JDK is faster than the open source version, but proprietary. It can be installed after doing a few preparatory steps:

If openjdk ist already installed, you could remove openjdk, if it is already installed on your machine or alternatively you could choose the java version you want use after installing the proprietary Oracle Version.

Choosing which version to use has to be done with the following command:

update-alternatives --help

If you want to just un-install openjdk, run the following command from your terminal

sudo apt-get purge openjdk*

You would now go ahead install oracle-java7, but you most likely will get an error message of this sort:

Download done.
sha256sum mismatch jdk-7u3-linux-x64.tar.gz
Oracle JDK 7 is NOT installed.
dpkg: error processing oracle-java7-installer (--configure):
subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1

Therefore, first do some more clean-ups:

Remove old installer files:

sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/info/oracle-java7-installer*

Search for remainders of old java installers:

sudo apt-get purge oracle-java7-installer*

Also get it out of your apt-sources list:

sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/*java*

Update your repository library:

sudo apt-get update

Now you can go ahead and install Oracle Java 7 by adding the following repository:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java

Update your repository library:

sudo apt-get update

Install Java7:

sudo apt-get install oracle-java7-installer

Running the following commands will now tell you, if Java has been installed:

which java

and which version you are running:

java --version

Again, as a reminder, to change which version to use (Open or Oracle):

update-alternatives --help

Annotations

If you have the idea, that installing a package went wrong and you are not sure, after trying to uninstall it again, if all the dependencies to that package are also gone, you can clean out your repository by using the following two commands:

sudo apt-get autoclean

sudo apt-get autoremove --purge