Eclipse is a well known Integrated Development Environment. It is used by developers all around the world to code their application, it is primarily developed in Java, but programmers can use it to code their applications in various languages like C/C++, COBOL, Fortran, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby on Rails etc. It is a cross platform application and runs fine on Microsoft Windows, Linux, Solaris and Mac OS.
It offers a base workspace and an extensible plug-in system for customization. The very first version of eclipse was launched in June 2004 and it has been under consistent development till date. Everything in eclipse is a plugin, so its pretty easy to integrate new plugins to extend its functionality. There are both paid, and free third party plugins available to customize the functionality of this wonderful development environment. Eclipse provides tools for Server, Web and Modeling platforms.
Installing Eclipse on ubuntu
Installing Eclipse on ubuntu is not very complex process, first of all make sure to install Java on your Linux system, Eclipse needs java as pre-requisite , run following command to install java on your ubuntu 15.04 system.
It might take some moments to download and install java, once the installation is complete, download Eclipse according to your operating system architecture, i.e. 32 bit or 64 bit.
Once the download is complete, move the eclipse downloaded installer to /opt.
Now go into opt partition of your system.
Extract the eclipse installer here.
We are on the most important stage of installation now, create a desktop file, named eclipse.desktop in /usr/share/applications/ by running the following Gedit command.
It will launch an empty file, copy and paste the followings into this empty file, as shown in following screenshot.
Name=Eclipse
Type=Application
Exec=/opt/eclipse/eclipse
Terminal=false
Icon=/opt/eclipse/icon.xpm
Comment=Integrated Development Environment
NoDisplay=false
Categories=Development;IDE;
Name[en]=eclipse.desktop
Save the file, and now run following command on terminal to automatically install this desktop file on your ubuntu system.
As last step of the install, go to /usr/local/bin and create eclipse symlink, following two commands should take care of this:
Congratulations, Eclipse has been installed successfully, launch it from Applications menu.
It will ask you to specify workspace when loaded, once done, main page will be loaded.
Start coding your programs now 
Conclusion
Eclipse has millions of users all around the world, its works like charm on all operating systems and so far it is considered one of the best IDEs for writing software applications. Hope you enjoyed the article, do let us know in comments
Peace be upon you, did you know the latest “Ubuntu Make” (Ubuntu Developer Tools Center) is already available in the Ubuntu 15.04 repo? Just use Ubuntu Software Center or apt-get
$ sudo apt-get install ubuntu-make
And use umake command to install Eclipse IDE without hassle anymore :
$ sudo umake ide eclipse
Simple and efficient right? 😉
Thank you
Thank You. Its working.
Glad to know, You are welcome
perfect tutorial…
thanks a lot
You’r welcome
Thank you @Krip!!
can you explain the reason behind creating a text file ?
This step will let Eclipse IDE to appear under Applications menu for easier access.
Great work. The tutorial is very explanatory and to the point. It worked like charm.
sudo desktop-file-install /usr/share/applications/eclipse.desktop
after running this command installation process didn’t start.. nothing is coming please help me to resolve it
Even I am facing same issue. Please help!
thanks for the effort to write up that … when I saw it I went straight back to my windows machine, double clicked on the setup.exe and was done, no wonder people still cant use Linux to get work done
Hey peter, did you follow these instructions on Ubuntu or Windows?
when i tried to extract d installer in /opt i get an error saying cannot mkdir. im very new to ubuntu need help
Please try command with “sudo” or post the exact error message here.
tar: eclipse-installer: Cannot mkdir: Permission denied
tar: eclipse-installer/p2: Cannot mkdir: No such file or directory
eclipse-installer/p2/org.eclipse.equinox.p2.engine/
tar: eclipse-installer: Cannot mkdir: Permission denied
tar: eclipse-installer/p2/org.eclipse.equinox.p2.engine: Cannot mkdir: No such file or directory
thats d excat error i get multiple times
thank you .. its working…
hello sir thanks it works i was stuck and now i have done my work