How to Install and Run eclipse on ubuntu

I give you the Installation procedure of Eclipse 3.7 on Ubuntu 11.04.

1) Download Eclipse. I got eclipse-SDK-3.7-linux-gtk-x86_64.tar.gz

2) Extract it

tar xzf eclipse-SDK-3.7-linux-gtk-x86_64.tar.gz

Or just be lazy and Right Click > Extract Here

3) Move to /opt/ folder

 sudo mv eclipse /opt/
 sudo cd /opt/
 sudo chown -R root:root eclipse
 sudo chmod -R +r eclipse

4) Create an eclipse executable in your path

sudo touch /usr/bin/eclipse
sudo chmod 755 /usr/bin/eclipse
sudo nano /usr/bin/eclipse

copy this into nano

#!/bin/sh
#export MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME="/usr/lib/mozilla/"
export ECLIPSE_HOME="/opt/eclipse"

$ECLIPSE_HOME/eclipse $*

save the file (^O = Ctrl+o) and exit nano (^X = Ctrl+x)

5) Create a gnome menu item

sudo nano /usr/share/applications/eclipse.desktop

copy this into nano

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

save and exit nano

6) Launch Eclipse for the first time

/opt/eclipse/eclipse -clean &

Hope it helps.

I've written an installer for Eclipse: https://github.com/bepcyc/eclipse_installer

Just download the eclipse archive (.tar.gz) to the same directory as the script and run:

./eclipse_installer.sh

It should work for any version of Eclipse and Linux.