How to use external Tomcat server in Netbeans on Linux?
Yes, Netbeans does support external Tomcat installations. It does so without any problems on Windows, but there are a few wrinkles if you want to do it on Linux - with Ubuntu-based distributions anyway.
I wrote up my experiences here:
http://www.peredur.net/2011/12/linux-tomcat-and-netbeans/
Hopefully, that should help.