Where does Eclipse look for eclipse.ini under Linux

There is only one file.

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 Aug 8 2012 /usr/lib/eclipse/eclipse.ini -> /etc/eclipse.ini

Here's how to determine which eclipse.ini file you should use (joomla.org):

• If you downloaded Eclipse IDE manually from internet the "eclipse.ini" file is just inside the unpacked folder
• If you installed Eclipse via terminal or software center the location of the file is "/etc/eclipse.ini"
• In some Linux versions the file can be found at "/usr/share/eclipse/eclipse.ini". Do not use this file if you found a config file at "/etc/eclipse.ini".

To be sure where your Eclipse folder is, check $ECLIPSE_HOME, and if not specified (these directions at least work for Juno):

• Open Eclipse as you normally do.
• Click Help -> About Eclipse SDK
• Click Installation Details
• Go to the Configuration tab
• Find "eclipse.home.location=file:PATH". PATH is where eclipse is installed.

sources:

• http://docs.joomla.org/Configuring_Eclipse_IDE_for_PHP_development/Linux:

You probably have already found this out, chances are when you installed Eclipse the installation created (or you did manually) a file /usr/bin/eclipse which if you check it probably looks like the following:

#!/bin/sh
export ECLIPSE_HOME="/opt/eclipse"

$ECLIPSE_HOME/eclipse $*

especially if you followed instructions similar to the ones like these on If-not-true-then-false

On the other hand if you have installed from a package, I suspect you will find that eclipse ends up in /usr/bin, most likely a symbolic link to /usr/lib/eclipse/eclipse (or at least I found it on my Fedora system after using yum to install eclipse).