It's been fifth time I do it in the last month, so here goes a little extract of what I've learned lately. This tutorial is gonna show you how to install the latest version of eclipse under Ubuntu- not the one available from the repository via apt-get utility, as it is often outdated, which I don't like. If you're ok with not using the latest version available- just install it with synaptic or apt-get.

• Download appropriate tar.gz from http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ of whatever shape and flavour you like (I am using C/C++)
• Untar it to directory of your choice- it can be your home directory, or /opt/
android@android:~$ cd /opt
android@android:/opt$ sudo tar -xzf /mnt/vbox_shared_folder/eclipse-cpp-galileo-SR2-linux-gtk.tar.gz
[sudo] password for android:
android@android:/opt$ ls
eclipse
• Create a file in /usr/bin directory, co eclipse can be executed by simply typing "eclipse" in the terminal. As you can see below, eclipse on my machine is run with more memory than default 256MB. I need 650MB so Eclipse's indexer won't run out of memory when indexing linux kernel. If you don't need that much memory, just omit the -vmargs -Xmx650M part.
android@android:~$ sudo echo "/opt/eclipse/eclipse -vmargs -Xmx650M $*" > ~/eclipse && sudo chmod a+rx ~/eclipse && sudo mv ~/eclipse /usr/bin
android@android:~$ cat /usr/bin/eclipse
/opt/eclipse/eclipse -vmargs -Xmx650M
• Some of the people can stop reading here, as remaining steps are here only for decorative purposes. Below we'll add Eclipse icon to Applications>Programming menu.
• Create a new file using

android@android:~$ sudo gedit /usr/share/applications/eclipse.desktop
And fill if with content below - you'll get an icon in Applications>Programming, which will run "eclipse" command we've created in previous step.


[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Eclipse C/C++
Comment=Eclipse C/C++ IDE
Exec=eclipse
Icon=/opt/eclipse/icon.xpm
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=GNOME;Application;Development;
StartupNotify=true

If you'd added -vmargs -Xmx650M in previous step, than eclipse will alway be run in 650MB mode, which probably is what you want to.