Due to a lot of minor errors with the eclipse from the repository( cannot install mylyn or pydev due to unmet dependencies) I manually downloaded from eclipse.org.

I have not had this problem before but when I go to ~/eclipse (where I extracted the zip) and try to run eclipse it will not run. From the command line I just get eclipse not installed use sudo apt-get to install it.

I know I have java installed.

sayth@sayth-TravelMate-5740G:~$ java -version
java version "1.6.0_23"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (IcedTea6 1.11pre) (6b23~pre10-0ubuntu5)
OpenJDK Server VM (build 20.0-b11, mixed mode)

how can I get eclipse to load normally?

Edit

I removed the openjdk and installed oracle java to /usr/java I then create a symbolic link sayth@sayth-TravelMate-5740G:~/eclipse$ sudo ln -s /usr/java ~/eclipse/jre

However still the error.

sayth@sayth-TravelMate-5740G:~/eclipse$ java eclipse.jar
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: eclipse/jar
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: eclipse.jar
    at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:217)
    at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
    at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:205)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:321)
    at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:294)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:266)
Could not find the main class: eclipse.jar. Program will exit.