NetBeans is one of the most popular Integrated Development Environment ( IDE , which provides a set of tools and features to speed up the development process, so helpful in boosting productivity of programmers). Netbeans is a free and open source Application, available for all common platforms – Linux Distors like Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal), Fedora, Linux Mint; Windows and Mac OS X. Netbeans 7.0 (Latest Stable Version) released a week ago. Netbeans is very popular among Java EE developers, because of its features and simplicity. This post will explain how to install netbeans on a freshly installed ubuntu 11.04, from USC (Ubuntu Software Center) or shell, you can also use Synaptic Package Manager.
You can also Try Eclipse IDE on Ubuntu 11.04, if you want, as Eclipse is another very popular open source IDE, but Netbeans is recommended, for beginner programmers because it’s very simple, lightweight and easy to start. A lot of free plugins are available to extend the features (support for Ruby and Rails, C/C++, PHP etc) of Netbeans IDE. I , personally don’t recommend IDE to beginner programmers, because of the fact that – ‘IDE will hide a lot of things, by creating a layer of abstraction, that we should now’; when you are experienced enough to understand the underlying details, then go for an IDE like NetBeans or Eclipse. Nebeans got 4.5 out of 5.0 in software center rating.

Features of NetBeans at a Glance
- good for java (EE features supported) programming
- Glashfish Server 3.1 is supported
- faster deployment with Weblogic
- it’s very simple to use
- all other basic features (e.g syntax coloring, Auto-completion) that you expect from an IDE
Installing NetBeans on Ubuntu 11.04
#1 : Open Ubuntu Software Center and search for ‘netbeans’.

#2 : Click on install button to start the installation procedure and wait for the installation to complete.
#3 : That’s all..Enjoy coding with Netbeans.
Alternative Way – installing NetBeans from Command Line
Open terminal and type the command, followed by your login password -
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install netbeans
