Guys -

I would really appreciate your help on getting ESBOX up and running on Ubuntu 9.10 (x86) - here's the steps that I have carried out;

1. Downloaded the two zip files from ESBOX website, common and linux-gtk.

2. Extracted both to esbox directory.

3. Run esbox

4. Dialog box pops up with workspace settings, click ok

5. Blank dialog box - no buttons, no way to close - just stuck....

Searched the internet for the past two nights and I cant find anything definitive.

There's a few suggestions - none of which have worked;

1. add export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=true to shell file and execute esbox

2. install JRE 1.5.0_22 (even though JRE 1.6.x should work)

3. Add this line to eclpise.ini, assume this would be esbox.ini

-Dorg.eclipse.swt.browser.XULRunnerPath=/usr/lib/xulrunner

What am I doing wrong, this is driving me potty!

OK - so option 3. was the correct one - however you also need to download xulrunner (install to usr/lib) from mozilla website and make sure that the option is added at the end of the .ini file.

esbox.ini

-startup
plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.0.101.R34x_v2008112 5.jar
--launcher.library
plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.gtk.linux.x86_1.0.101 .R34x_v20080805
-vmargs
-Xms40m
-Xmx800m
-XX:MaxPermSize=128m
-Dorg.eclipse.swt.browser.XULRunnerPath=/usr/lib/xulrunner

I also experienced that. Another option to get Eclipse working (although you will have to rely on the mnemonics to get some dialogs working) is the following:

With workaround.ini being:
There's a bug report about that here, as pointed by the Esbox installation page in the garage

An update I found on the esbox garage site, at the installation page:

NOTE: in Ubunutu 9.10 (or other platforms using GTK+ 2.18), Eclipse UI will be very erratic without setting GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=true before launch. See this post for details.