netbeans (java) shows empty window in tiling window manager (awesome wm)

The JVM contains a hard-coded list of non re-parenting window managers such as Awesome. You can fix this by using the wmname utility provided by suckless.org in the package suckless-tools to set the window manager name property of the root window:

sudo apt-get install suckless-tools

then

wmname LG3D

or

wmname compiz

Then restart or launch your Java application.

I've confirmed this to be working on JDK 1.7u3 with Netbeans 7.1 on Ubuntu 11.10/Awesome.

For additional details, check out Awesome's wiki on the issue.

You can define an environment variable that says your WM is non-reparenting:

export _JAVA_AWT_WM_NONREPARENTING=1

source