Why did Eclipse push 4.4.0RC3 to installations?

Don't fix it if it ain't broken.

I should have thought about that when I saw an Eclipse update (turns out to be 4.4.0RC3) coming up when looking for a Force.com IDE upgrade.  But I didn't.  I went ahead with the installation.  That's probably the old system admin version of me - always get the latest version!

Eclipse wouldn't launch, complaining about JVM 1.7 as required.  Fine, I installed Java 7.  It launched then, but I was greeted with a blank package explorer (after upgrading the workspace).  Looks like the new version doesn't work with Force.com v29.

My mistake for trusting it aside, why would Eclipse push out a RC version?  In the past I never had issues with Eclipse updates.

So stick with your original Luna - it worked fine for me.  Just be prepared to reject any update they might put out there.