There are a variety of differences and similarities between the Eclipse and NetBeans development platforms as IDEs for Java development. Choice seems to largely be a matter of preference, as the feature sets are mostly convergent.
Project Similarities
Both tools are:
* Supported plugin model
* Java IDE with tons of bells and whistles
* Java 5 syntax support
Eclipse
Eclipse has a strong open source community following and plugin community.
* Directly supported by Eclipse Foundation, including IBM
* Strong plugin support from third parties
* SWT test bed
* Built and distributed on GCJ/Classpath by several Linux distros.
NetBeans
NetBeans has the direct support of Sun and has made strong efforts to be a competitive Java development platform to Eclipse.
* Directly supported by Sun
* Good J2EE/J2ME support
* Extras for integration with Solaris
