How to Install Eclipse Oxygen IDE on Ubuntu 16.04 | 17.10 | 18.04

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For developers looking for a great IDE platform to build their applications and manage their codes, Eclipse should be a great place to start… Eclipse is a popular Java Integrated Development Environment (IDE), but also works with C/C++ IDE and PHP IDE and other languages..

This brief tutorial is going to show students and new users how to easily install Eclipse Oxygen IDE installer on Ubuntu 16.04 | 17.10 | 18.04 desktop…

Eclipse is not only good at developing applications but you can use  its collection of tools to easily enhance your Eclipse desktop IDE, including GUI builders and tools for modeling, charting and reporting, testing, and more.

To install Eclipse on Ubuntu, follow the steps below:

Step 1: Install Java JDK8

Eclipse requires Java JDK to be installed on the system you want to use… At this time, only Java JDK 8 is fully compatible.. to install JDK, use the steps below:

The easiest way to install Oracle Java JDK 8 on Ubuntu is via a third party PPA… To add that PPA, run the commands below

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java

After running the commands above, you should see a prompt to accept the PPA key onto Ubuntu… accept and continue

Now that the PPA repository has been added to Ubuntu, run the commands below to download Oracle Java 9 installer…. the installer should install the latest Java JDK 9 on your Ubuntu machines.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install oracle-java8-installer

When you run the commands above you’ll be prompted to access the license terms of the software… accept and continue..

oracle java 9

Set Oracle JDK8 as default, to do that, install the oracle-java8-set-default package. This will automatically set the JAVA env variable.

sudo apt install oracle-java8-set-default

The command above will automatically set Java 9 as the default… and that should complete your installation, you can check you java version by running following command.

javac -version

Step 2: Download Eclipse Oxygen

Now that Java JDK 8 is installed, got and download Eclipse Oxygen IDE package for your systems.. the link below can be used to get it.

https://www.eclipse.org/downloads/
ubuntu eclipse install

Extract the downloaded package to the /opt directory using the commands below… by default Eclipse package should be downloaded into the ~/Downloads folder of your home directory…

Step 3: Install Eclipse IDE

Use the commands below to extract the content in the  ~/Downloads folder… The next line launches the installer…

tar xfz ~/Downloads/eclipse-inst-linux64.tar.gz
~/Downloads/eclipse-installer/eclipse-inst

Select the package IDE you want to install and continue…

Eclipse ubuntu install

Use the onscreen instructions to complete the installer.. Accept the default installation directory and continue

ubuntu eclipse install

Next, accept the license terms and continue… wait for Eclipse installer to download and install all the packages..

ubuntu eclipse install

After downloading the installer should complete… all you have to do is launch the program…

eclipse ubuntu install

Step 3: Create Eclipse App Launcher

Now that Eclipse is downloaded and installed, create a launcher for the application… to do that, run the commands below

nano .local/share/applications/eclipse.desktop

Next, copy and paste the content below into the file and save

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Eclipse JEE Oxygen
Type=Application
Exec=/home/richard/eclipse/jee-oxygen/eclipse/eclipse
Terminal=false
Icon=/home/richard/eclipse/jee-oxygen/eclipse/icon.xpm
Comment=Integrated Development Environment
NoDisplay=false
Categories=Development;IDE;
Name[en]=Eclipse

Replace the highlighted username (richard) with your own account name… also, the Exec = location and icon.xpm should depend on where Eclipse got installed on your system..

Save the file and exit…

You should then have a launcher for Eclipse JEE Oxygen… open Dash or the activities overview and search for Eclipse… then launch.

To create additional IDEs, you must repeat step 3 by launching the installer again and created an application launcher for that IDE…

When the app launches, you should be able to configure it for your environment..

Enjoy!

You may also like the post below:

How to Install NetBeans on Ubuntu 16.04 | 17.10 | 18.04 with Oracle JDK 8 Support

Published by Richard Zayzay

Hi, I'm Richard. In my spare time, I research topics that are interesting and worthwhile for users and students who want to try something new. I, too, am a student and my focus here is to help other students and new users get started with managing Ubuntu Linux, Windows, Content Management Systems (CMS) and others. I try to do my best explaining the topics and detailing the instructions so that anyone can understand. These tutorials may not work in all situations and for all users. However, if you run into trouble, please ask your questions below and I or someone from the community may help you resolve. Thanks for reading and hope you come back. ~Richard

24 Replies to “How to Install Eclipse Oxygen IDE on Ubuntu 16.04 | 17.10 | 18.04”

  1. Wonderful instructions – they helped me a lot.
    So I’m going to point out a couple things.
    Step 3: Install Eclipse IDE
    I didn’t see the command to change into the download directory. when I issues the command as is, it created the directory in ~
    do the second command didn’t work – easy to figure out and fix. but . .
    Step 3: Create Eclipse App Launcher
    step 3 again?
    and for me it was “cpp-oxygen” not “jee-oxygen” because . . . well you know.

    Reply

  2. I have installed the Eclipse but i can’t get the icon to the desktop. I am having this error ” error writing .local/share/application/eclipse.desktop: no such file or directory

    Reply

  8. i have installed jdk 10 at my ubuntu , i am new ubuntu user , is it ok if i follow ur page installing eclipse , if it only needed jdk 8?

    Reply

    1. Hi,

      Very useful guide – thank you.

      I found a bit of a gotcha…

      I ran the installer from a terminal, with sudo (habit):

      >sudo ./eclipse-inst

      This ran the GUI installer as you’d expect – HOWEVER – the install directory was set to /root/eclipse/.

      I did not notice… so proceeded with the install and launched Eclipse directly from the installer on completion. I built a full python app before I closed my session. The next time I logged in, I of course could not see my work – even with prefixing my terminal searches with sudo. ARGH!!

      I needed to re-install with the same procedure and select the existing workspace (which was also in /root/ directory) before I could then access and export the project.

      It is very odd that the Eclipse installer behaves in this way. Can anyone explain why, when running under sudo, the installer thought I was actually running as root? Even with elevated privileges, you cannot normally see/write inside /root/ so it was surprising that the installer could.

      After copying the project out, I see that the owner is also root, so it looked as though eclipse itself was also running as root, when launched in the way I describe.

      Reply

  10. I installed eclipse photon successfully but while saving nano file get this error: error writing .local/share/application/eclipse.desktop: no such file or directory

    Reply

    1. Please paste this on your terminal:
      cd ~
      Then paste:
      nano .local/share/applications/eclipse.desktop

      Reply

  12. @Subhro Bera . It’s actually .local/share/applications/eclipse.desktop instead of .local/share/application/eclipse.desktop .
    You’ve done a small typo at application .

    Reply

  16. I got this error:
    An error has occurred. See error log for more details.
    java.lang.NullPointerException

    Reply

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