How To Install Eclipse IDE on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Eclipse is an open source and free multi-language and multi-platform (Windows , Linux and Mac) software development program that used to build JAVA based web applications. It is written in Java program and can be used to develop Java based applications and other various plugins, including languages like C, C++, PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby and Rails framework and much more.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo’ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step by step installation Eclipse IDE on a Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) server.

Install Eclipse IDE on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Step 1. First make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running these following apt-get commands in the terminal.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Step 2. Installing Java.

We need to install Java 8 and above. Run the following commands to complete this task:

apt-get install openjdk-8-jdk

Verify the Java version on your machine:

java -version

Step 3. Installing Eclipse IDE.

Download latest eclipse package. This guide uses Eclipse IDE for Java Developers version. Another popular versions are Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers and Eclipse for PHP Developers. Select also 32-bit or 64-bit version depending on your system:

### 32 Bit ###
curl -O http://ftp.jaist.ac.jp/pub/eclipse/technology/epp/downloads/release/oxygen/R/eclipse-java-oxygen-R-linux-gtk.tar.gz

### 64 Bit ###
curl -O http://ftp.jaist.ac.jp/pub/eclipse/technology/epp/downloads/release/oxygen/R/eclipse-java-oxygen-R-linux-gtk-x86_64.tar.gz

Extract Eclipse package to your desired directory:

tar -zxvf eclipse-java-oxygen-R-linux-gtk*.tar.gz -C /usr/

Making a Symlink:

ln -s /usr/eclipse/eclipse /usr/bin/eclipse

Step 4. Create desktop launcher.

Create a new file eclipse.desktop in /usr/share/applications/ and add the below code:

nano /usr/share/applications/eclipse.desktop

Add the following content in the above file:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Eclipse 4.7
Comment=Eclipse Oxygen
Exec=/usr/bin/eclipse
Icon=/usr/eclipse/icon.xpm
Categories=Application;Development;Java;IDE
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Terminal=0

Now install that desktop file using the below command:

sudo desktop-file-install /usr/share/applications/eclipse.desktop

For Eclipse icon to be displayed in dash, run following command:

sudo cp /opt/eclipse/icon.xpm /usr/share/pixmaps/eclipse.xpm

Congratulation’s! You have successfully installed Eclipse. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing Eclipse IDE in Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial Xerus system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official Eclipse web site.

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