problem running eclipse on ubuntu?

If you allready installed java** you need to add the Java-Path to your eclipse.ini

in my case it's located at:

/usr/lib/eclipse/eclipse.ini

there you need to add direct under the "openFile" statement, where you replace the path with your java path:

-vm
/usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk/bin/java    //!replace with your path to java!

** check wether java is installed by typing the commands

java -version 

or

javac -version

If you are sure that java is installed, but it's not found you may have multiple versions installed, check that by:

sudo update-alternatives --config java

and select installation first

I solved it by created a symbolic link java in /usr/bin that points to the VM.

Steps :

1. Downloaded the appropriate version of Oracle's JDK from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html?ssSourceSiteId=otnjp

2. extract it to any folder. For example :

   tar zxvf ~/Downloads/jdk-8u5-linux-x64.tar.gz ~/DEV

3. create symbolic link with name java :

   cd /usr/bin

   ln -s ~/DEV/jdk1.8.0_05/bin/java java

You need to install either the openjdk-7-jre or oracle-java7-jre package.

sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jre

Note that openjdk-7-jre is easier to install, because it's available via the standard Ubuntu repository, whereas you have to build oracle-java7-jre yourself using java-package.