Remote Pair Programming in IntelliJ

A good alternative to VNC is screenhero. It's very lightweight, but unfortunately does not support Linux.

Floobits creates a pairing session at the IDE level. It supports many popular IDEs from IntelliJ, Eclipse, to emacs.

For simple working from home, I can start a vncserver session on my box at work, then start vncviewer to connect to that session, start up all my design tools (including IntelliJ). When I get to work, I connect to the corporate network and run a second instance of vncviewer. I'm not sure what the limits are, but I've had vncviewer running on both my laptop and my (work) desktop before, with the input from both keyboards and mice fighting it out. I've never done pair programming, but I thought the idea is two sets of eyes/fingers but on monitor/keyboard. Add skype and you may have all you need.

About nine years too late for OP, but others interested can try CodeTogether - available now for IntelliJ, Eclipse and VS Code. Participants join in a browser, but get a full IDE-like experience with IntelliSense, validation, reference searches, navigation, etc. The JetBrains Plugin registry link is here and here's a short video.

Full disclosure: I work for Genuitec, makers of CodeTogether.