NetBeans

NetBeans is a decent integrated development environment. Below are instructions to install it.

Versions
There are several versions available of NetBeans and different courses use different versions. The course page should tell you what exact version of NetBeans you need.

NetBeans 4.1

 * Install Java 5 JDK
 * Download NetBeans 4.1
 * Follow the Typical installation instructions below.

NetBeans 5.5.1

 * Install Java 6 JDK
 * Download NetBeans 5.5.1 (If you're doing or plan to do M362, I suggest you get this version which includes the Sun Java System Application Server.) For this, you will need libstdc++-5).
 * Follow the Typical installation instructions below.

Linux
Open up a terminal and go to where you downloaded the .bin file. Then execute: chmod +x netbeans-*-linux.bin ./netbeans-*-linux.bin

And follow the wizard for the installation. That's it! So far you're set! Nothing OU specific this time I guess.

If your default JDK is not Sun's, you can specify its location, for instance: ./netbeans-*-linux.bin -is:javahome /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun

Mac
Feel free to contact me if you found a way to make this work on Mac. I guess it's basically the same as with Linux, so try it!