I installed eclipse on a new unubtu install, via the package manager. I have Galileo. I copied my home directory from an older machine, and tried to open that workspace. Now I dont see any java perspective.
(Possibly, all the info above is not relevant, but I just wanted to add any possible info, as this a clean install of Eclipse via package manager, so I cant think of any other non standard thing I might have done.)
What happens if you go to Window > Open Perspective > Other...? Don't you see Java listed there?
If not, I don't think the problem is related to the workspace from your previous configuration. But maybe you did copy a
~/.eclipse
directory from your old machine and this one may cause problems. Try to rename it as~/.eclipse.save
for example and restart Eclipse to see if it helps.