Install Google App Engine Plugin for Eclipse

First things first. Google is offering a plugin for Eclipse. So I had to download and install eclipse. The thing is I recently switched to ubuntu linux (9.10) and was so fascinated with its easy-to-use interface that I immediately jumped to Applications --> Ubuntu Software Center and installed eclipse. All went fine. Until I started following google's installation instrunctions for the plugin. The setup would never finish, because there were some missing libraries. I started searching the internet for help. I found that ubuntu's release of eclipse is a slightly different one that lacks update support. I tried using the update sites of the mainstream release of eclipse, but that didn't do the trick either.
I was frustrated. I uninstalled the ubuntu release and downloaded the official release. Things went smoothly, because eclipse doesn't need installing! Only extracting! When I arrived at the installation plugin screen I realised that some things were not viewable. That was really weird. Just as if I was looking at a non stable release! As a consequence, I was unable to install the plugin.
I was even more frustrated, but I didn't quit just yet. I starting searching the internet blindly. With no luck. Then I started looking at all the Google App Engine pages just in case. And there I found it. At a google blog there was one easy step to solve all of my problems! So all I had to do was create a new file in the eclipse home directory with the following lines:

------------
#!/bin/sh
export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1
./eclipse
------------

and run eclipse through it. All of my troubles were over. All the instructions for the plugin installation were completing successfully! For your reference the google installation instructions are at the following urls:

http://code.google.com/eclipse/docs/getting_started.html#installing
[http://dl.google.com/eclipse/plugin/3.5]

After a few days I tried repeating the above procedure at a windows xp sp3 machine. I was surprised to find out that the installation process was flawless, without a glitch! This is a clear win for windows! Although eclipse is an open source software, it's installation on an ubuntu machine was far more troublesome that in windows.