To add Netbeans to the Unity launcher in Ubuntu 11.10 is unfortunately not as easy as executing the application and click “Stick in launcher”.

Problems: - If you click on the icon again, it will try to start a new instance of Netbeans. Netbeans will see that it’s already opened, so it will not start another instance, but this way it’s still dirty and slow. - Unity will forget the link on reboot, so the icon disappears.

To solve these problems, download http://plugins.netbeans.org/plugin/40321/unity-launcher first.

Open Netbeans and go to Tools -> Plugins -> Downloads -> More >