Eclipse IDE (Integrated Development Environment) is a multi-language software development environment and an extensible plug-in system.

It can be used to develop applications in Java and, by means of various plug-ins, other programming languages including Ada, C, C++, COBOL, Haskell, Perl, PHP, Python, R, Ruby (including Ruby on Rails framework), Scala, Clojure, Groovy and Scheme. It can also be used to develop packages for the software Mathematica.

Development environments include the Eclipse Java development tools (JDT) for Java, Eclipse CDT for C/C++, and Eclipse PDT for PHP, among others.

This tutorial for Eclipse installation is primarily written for Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin users but it should work well in other versions (mostly Debian derivatives).

How to install Eclipse IDE platform on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Precise Pangolin

1) Open a terminal and enter the command

sudo apt-get install eclipse-platform

2) After Eclipse is installed you can install development plugins based on your needs, e.g.:

sudo apt-get install eclipse-jdt - will install Java Development Tools (JDT) package for Eclipse

sudo apt-get install eclipse-cdt - will install C/C++ development tools packages for Eclipse