Eclipse Vs NetBeans again (on ubuntu)

Though i’m still fighting with ubuntu gusty to get the right screen resolution, i thought of giving my favourite java ides a try on gusty.

On windows, i tend to use netbeans more than eclipse, (mainly because i work with JSF/JPA more as of now)

So i thought of seeing how these 2 friends of mine behave in ubuntu.

I love ubuntu for a lot of reasons. And the most important reason is the ease with which you can install most of the day-to-day applications.

Ubuntu has a wonderful “package manager” (similar to the childish Add/Remove programs in windows). With the synaptic package manager, you can almost install all applications you ever need.

So, i looked for netbeans first and i was bit disappointed to see only netbeans 5.5 in the repository. But i thought of downloading it, because, something is better than nothing, right?.

Downloading and installing netbeans-5.5 is a piece of cake in ubuntu. All we need to do is to open a terminal and type “apt-get install netbeans-5.5”. Whoa!

I thought of doing the otherway round, since i feel more comfortable seeing a UI than a command line, so i used the synaptic package manager to download netbeans-5.5.

Smooth. Everything went through fine, until i opened netbeans.

The font rendering was horrible. (May be because i had only jdk 1.5). But i must admit that NetBeans looked really horrible. I couldn’t spend much time with it because of the horrible fonts. Though it’s a swing issue, it gives really a bad image to netbeans.

Leave alone the font, the look and feel was even more horrible. I just couldn’t digest the default “ocean” look and feel. NetBeans looked like “odd man out” in my ubuntu desktop. I felt really sorry for netbeans, because, on windows, it’s very difficult for a non-java user to point out netbeans as a java application. But on linux, netbeans looked like an old volkswagon among new sedans like lexus. Pity you netbeans.

So, i thought of trying our beloved friend eclipse. Again installing eclipse was really really easy. No need to go to eclipse.org. Just the ubuntu package manager does the job for you. I really really like ubuntu a lot in this regard.

I started eclipse. Wowwww..It’s beautiful man. The fonts were superb and pleasing to the eyes. In the first impression itself, eclipse won my heart eventually. And the look and feel, that’s the same as i see in windows. Great job, eclipse team.

I don’t know whether it’s because of swt or not, but i really gotta love eclipse on ubuntu.

Eclipse is really the winner over netbeans (alteast in ubuntu).

(Note: I’m currently downloading java se 6 and netbeans 6.0. Let’s see how well netbeans 6.0 fare)