Netbeans IDE Look & Feel under Ubuntu 12.04

Whatever issue you’ve got with the Look & Feel in Ubuntu 12.04 PP, running Netbeans, you can set the LAF native look & Feel instead of the GTK one (which has by the way several issues under Linux).

SOLUTION 1

Go to your netbeans directory (ex: /home/user/netbeans7.2/etc) and open the file : netbeans.conf

then add the following line to netbeans options:
-J-Dswing.aatext=true -J-Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=lcd --laf Metal

# ${HOME} will be replaced by JVM user.home system property
 netbeans_default_userdir="${HOME}/.netbeans/7.1.2"

# Options used by NetBeans launcher by default, can be overridden by explicit
 # command line switches:
 netbeans_default_options="-J-client -J-Xss2m -J-Xms32m -J-XX:PermSize=32m -J-Dapple.laf.useScreenMenuBar=true -J-Dapple.awt.graphics.UseQuartz=true -J-Dsun.java2d.noddraw=true -J-Dsun.zip.disableMemoryMapping=true -J-Dswing.aatext=true -J-Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=lcd --laf Metal"
 # Note that default -Xmx and -XX:MaxPermSize are selected for you automatically.
 # You can find these values in var/log/messages.log file in your userdir.
 # The automatically selected value can be overridden by specifying -J-Xmx or
 # -J-XX:MaxPermSize= here or on the command line.

# If you specify the heap size (-Xmx) explicitly, you may also want to enable
 # Concurrent Mark & Sweep garbage collector. In such case add the following
 # options to the netbeans_default_options:
 # -J-XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC -J-XX:+CMSClassUnloadingEnabled -J-XX:+CMSPermGenSweepingEnabled
 # (see http://wiki.netbeans.org/FaqGCPauses)

# Default location of JDK, can be overridden by using --jdkhome :
 netbeans_jdkhome="/usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.7.0"

# Additional module clusters, using ${path.separator} (';' on Windows or ':' on Unix):
 #netbeans_extraclusters="/absolute/path/to/cluster1:/absolute/path/to/cluster2"

# If you have some problems with detect of proxy settings, you may want to enable
 # detect the proxy settings provided by JDK5 or higher.
 # In such case add -J-Djava.net.useSystemProxies=true to the netbeans_default_options.

Start Netbeans and it should look like this:

Netbeans 7.1.2

Remark:
You can achieve the same result running netbeans with sudo command:

sudo sh /home/youruserhomename/netbeans-7.2.1/bin/netbeans

But this is not recommended.

Or by running netbeans with LAF parameter:

/bin/sh /home/youruserhomename/netbeans-7.2.1/bin/netbeans -J-Dswing.aatext=true -J-Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=lcd --laf Metal

SOLUTION 2:

if you really want to keep the GTK look and feel for netbeans, then you have to modify the default general interface font in Ubuntu :

To something else than Ubuntu regular font which is bolder than the other usual fonts. Choose Sans or Droid Sans.

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface font-name 'Droid Sans 11'

SOLUTION 3:

remove buggy unicode fonts, in order to use GTK look and feel.

sudo apt-get remove fonts-unfonts-core

Run Netbeans 7.1.2  from your Terminal typing only : netbeans  instead of the long path:

Create a file and name it netbeans and append the following (And modify the Netbeans home directory to yours):

#!/bin/sh
NETBEANS_HOME="/home/hanynowsky/netbeans-7.1.2"
$NETBEANS_HOME/bin/netbeans $*

And finally put this file in /usr/bin/

Once done, press ALT+F2 , type netbeans and press ENTER

Netbeans command Run