NOTE: This no longer appears to be the case (August, 2009). I'm keeping this page for historical reference.

Typically, when launching 64bit Eclipse on 64bit Ubuntu, it will crash. The problem is Sun's JVM.

Install IBM's 64bit Java #

Download#

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/java/jdk/linux/download.html

You will need to register, but it is free.

Select Version#

Java SE Version 6" "64-bit AMD/Opteron/EM64T"

Install Eclipse x64#

I got the tar.gz version and extracted it to

/opt/eclipse-3.4.1-x64

Creating calling script#

I created an eclipse_ibm script like so:

#!/bin/bash 
PATH=/opt/ibm-java-x86_64-60/jre/bin:$PATH 
/opt/eclipse-3.4.1-x64/eclipse

Plugins#

Aptana#

To install Aptana, you must download the zip file and install the plugin from there. Direct over the web install will fail.