Ubuntu 16 LTS - Eclipse window preferences not wor

Question

I've just installed Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. I downloaded a fresh Eclipse on March 2 for Linux 64-bit.

I am using the latest Oracle hotspot JDK 1.8 update 91 release.

The first thing I noticed, while trying to enable Eclipse general preferences to show stack usage, was that opening the preferences window took 30 seconds and clicking on the different tree elements has no effect on the content of the preferences screens.

Other menus seem to be working properly, but this one in particular is going nowhere.

Has anybody else experienced this problem, and how can I solve it?

Answer 1

I had problem starting Eclipse using left side Launcher - got problems with preferences.

When I launch eclipse from its directory by double clicking "eclipse" or when using Terminal to launch eclipse, then it WORKS.

Answer 2

put the 2 lines in italics below into eclipse.ini:

--launcher.GTK_version 2

before the line:

--launcher.appendVmargs

Answer 3

The issue is the updated GTK version.

The following post solves the problem: https://askubuntu.com/questions/761604/eclipse-not-working-in-16-04

Setting the following into eclipse.ini

--launcher.GTK_version
2

As explained in the ubuntu Q&A.