I'm not sure what exact procedure you are following, but I normally have (regardless of
IDE or if you have it at all) a
git installed (command line tool for git).
Then again, I personally never pull an initial repository via IDE, I simply navigate to directory where I want to clone a repository to, and do:
git clone <repository_path>
i.e. (if using pwd-protected ssh key; with an https url would be an url...)
git clone git@github.com:liutaurasvilda/conways-gol.git
And then, if I'm being asked to, I enter the password, but that happened on my system for the very first time (as I presume git saved pwd to its internals). And then, I open cloned project with an IDE (any).
So, having said all that - can you try to clone it with
git, without using NetBeans, as NetBeans really should just wrap those git commands in order to do something similar under the hood anyway. That way you'd potentially narrow the area where the problem is.