If you need functionality beyond the bundled functionality of one of their distros (for instance, the Eclipse for Java EE Developers distro which bundles things like the WTP), I have found the installation process for extra plugins excruciatingly painful.Perhaps it's simply a function of the size of the community. This can be very frustrating, as much smaller open source products that I use are really good about answering questions I have. I have tried several times to get help on a particular subject or plugin only to be sent to 3 or 4 different newsgroups who all point to the other newsgroup or just plain don't respond. Despite the size of the project, I have found the community to be very lacking and/or confusing enough to be hard to participate in.I have wasted many precious hours trying to use a given feature in Eclipse by walking through its documentation only to discover that it was all trash to begin with. If it's not incomplete, then it's just flat out wrong.

I don't know who writes the stuff, but if it's not just flatly missing, it's incomplete. Its plugin architecture and its extensibility are hard to rival and the fact that it's free is a huge plus for smaller teams or tight budgets. Let me just start out by saying that Eclipse is a fantastic IDE for Java and many other languages.