Eclipse 3.3.* frequently crashed

I have encountered the crash on Ubuntu8.04 (x86 and AMD64),
finally I solved it on Ubuntu8.04 x86 by passing the '-vm' initial paramenter:
-vm
/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.06/jre/lib/i386/client/libjvm.so

Notice, the value isn't the well-known one:
/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.06/bin/java

if you set this value instead, it won't work.

Also, I have not tested it on AMD64 platform, currently I use IBM JDK for those platform and worked well.

Good luck.