I have some disappointment on netbeans 11, because plugin activation problems i face. Netbeans 12 i feel different, no errors on plugin activation. Beginning my trials for Netbeans 12 LTS (yes its a long term support version), i downloaded a platform independent zip file and extract it on my home folder. I saw on the website that older version no longer supported, including Netbeans 11 ???
This trials run on OpenBSD 6.7 laptop. Open terminal and cd to netbeans12/bin. Execute ./netbeans& [enter]. The Netbeans 12 run with JDK 8 just fine (oldest JDK version supported by Netbeans 12). First time first , activate all installed plugin to see if any errors happen. No errors, its good down the road. Right away Netbeans 12 do a task of downloading repository, hmmm. This downloading stuff is new and it takes long time to complete, i leave it over night, maybe just my slow old laptop cant handle it :). So far its a positive experience and i will say its a good job to the developers.