Sun Mad Hatter Linux Desktop Revealed

magellan writes "Sun has released screenshots of its upcoming Mad Hatter Linux desktop. Mad Hatter includes GNOME, StarOffice, Evolution, and Mozilla. Sun has made minor modifications to Gnome to make it more familiar to Windows users. Sun's Mad Hatter, along with SuSE's new push on the desktop, could make Linux on the corporate desktop and laptop a bigger reality."

Comments

Windows...

[corkhead0]

If windows is so bad why do we keep trying to copy it?

fp

Re:Windows...

[xyvimur]

Maybe just to `convert' people. People are not willing to change their habits easily - so it's kind of bridge between `worlds'.
On the other hand I'm sick of all attempts to make WM's look'n'feel like windows environment. It's reasonable to a point, but `copying' every tiny detail is too much.

Re:Windows...

[Gyorg_Lavode]

The problem with windows was never it's gui. (Well, not for most users at least.)

Re:Windows...

[MBCook]

I think that the Windows GUI (the 9x/2K one, I don't like new XP one) is a fantastic GUI. It's VERY well done, and some of the things (like the start menu and the systray) are very well done.

When pepole bash Windows (this includes me), we're usually bashing the stability, the security holes, etc. The "standard" Windows GUI, is quite good though.

Re:Windows...

[Spellbinder]

i think that it is a problem if you copy the windows guy for users used to windows
most user will think "Ohh, this looks like windows, so it has to work like windows!"
like on a cd player or a vcr all the buttons look same
and i think may will get angry if it does not
if the UI clearly differs from the windows the user will realise "Ohhh, this is something else, maybe i should make the tutorial that pops up, or look at some documentation!!"
i think a move away from windows would be a real chance to change and improve the UI dramatical
we should not keep things because users are used to them but because they are the easiest way to do the job

Re:Windows...

[RoLi]

Sorry, but can you even point out what is so "fantastic" about the Windows GUI and what sets it apart from KDE?

In my opinion, the Windows GUI is pretty simplistic. Sure it's fine if you just use a handful of apps at the same time, but as soon as you have more than 10 or so windows open, you need multiple desktops.

Re:Windows...

[Anonymous Coward]

For me that's always been a large part of the problem. It's not so much the look (though it tends to be ill-designed even at that level), but the way one has to interact with it. It's just bad from a usability point of view.

Nonetheless I have no objection to people copying conceptual elements and general "look" to get people into the groove of a better user experience. Those will be essentially the same elements MS previously copied from Apple, without all the cruft and intentional obfuscation they pasted on afterwards.

Re:Windows...

[Reid]

I'll bet it's related to one of my Windows peeves: I can't backup a directory of source code to cd with the windows explorer if I have Visual C++ open to that project. It complains that some file (or files) is in use and barfs. WTF.

If we're beefing about Windows, I also don't like how it manages windows. If a window is wedged, there doesn't appear to be any way to move it or iconify it. I much prefer the unix window manager style, where a separate window manager application handles all that.

Re:Windows...

[DoninIN]

GUI preference is largely a matter of familiarity. I loved 3.1 I had no frame of reference, since then I've been configuring whatever GUI I use, (From KDE, afterstep, XP, 98 NT4 whatever) to work essentially the same way. Groups of "windows" you open up and use a number of icons inside to start the programs you use most often, or windows to double click on frequently used files. I hate the "start" menu, and I probably always will. I use the command line for a certain set of tasks, but I hate the whole start menu popup, it's 'cause I'm old and because I've developed these habits. Others love the start menu style GUIs I haven't seen a single.

Re:Windows...

[Jace of Fuse!]

XP usability can be identical to Windows 95.

I don't suppose you know enough to change to classic mode, set up the classic look, and simply turn off all of the fluff?

Most people I know who don't want to upgrade to XP because they don't like the look are exactly the sorts of people that aren't technically savvy enough to even begin to think about dealing with the higher learning curve of *nix.

I have less respect for someone that uses Linux because they think it's perfect, than I do for someone that runs Windows but realizes that it isn't.

Re:Windows...

[Pharmboy]

If windows is so bad why do we keep trying to copy it?

Excellent question. I see two basic reasons.

1. We are already familiar with it, so the learning curve is less steep. Although the Windows desktop is not perfect, it IS pretty good, and the flexibility of Linux will allow more configurability under all circumstances, so it can be made less like Windows and more like what you want it to be, if you know how. If you don't know how to configure it, then the "Windows like" look is probably the best desktop anyway.

2. The closer the Linux desktop looks to Windows 9x/xp, the more people will be willing and/or able to use it. The more people that use it, the more likely that popular applications will get ported to it OR some group will form to develop an open source application to replace the proprietary software. Linux doesn't need 97% to be successful. 20% of the desktop market is more than enough for this to happen. We are about 17%+ at this time.

In business, a company that want to compete with larger companies in the same industry will often compete on the lower price part of the market. Units are less expensive to stock, and you can gain "economy of scale" at a lower investment level. You make the cheap stuff and sell it for less, then work your way up the ladder, eating away your competitor's market share. The same holds true for Linux.

As an advocate of Linux, who uses Windows and Linux, I have faith that the applications and commercial support for Linux will continue to grow. Broadening the appeal of Linux to mainstream users will excellerate this process, by increasing the potential financial returns for companies who are considering developing or porting applications on Linux.

You may or may not like software from Adobe, Macromedia, and the like, but many DO, and they will be more willing to switch if they can get their favorite software (or free alternatives to a degree). Me, I just want Photoshop on Linux so I can work up CMYK stuff. But we need less technical minded people using Linux before we will get broader support by developers.

It is in our own best interest to welcome the broadest range of Linux users, an open tent that all are welcome in. This includes people who don't want to know how the OS works, they just want it to work. When all is said and done, Linux has the best potential to do this.

Re:Windows...

[thornist]

Third, even if Windows is a nonoptimal way to operate, many, many people know how to use Windows and Windows software. They're familiar with Windows interface conventions, and anything different from Windows will face an immediate barrier.

Kind of like qwerty keyboards really...

Re:Windows...

[0x0d0a]

Use a multi-clipboard program and you're fine.

nice, but...

[Thomas A. Anderson]

Nice, but I like the beta redhat screenies better: https://listman.redhat.com/archives/rhl-devel-list /2003-August/msg00117.html

Gnome sure can be pretty - it mught be time for me to switch back from kde....

Re:Kinda skimpish,

[0x0d0a]

I'm not so worried about Sun being a nice player. They've contributed some to GNOME development already.

The idea is to let Sun do the not-so-fun-but-profitable work of pulling people over to GNOME from Windows. Sun goes after Microsoft, and we get to keep making fun software.

A lot of the folks Sun's after aren't coders. There's lots of good software for coders out there, because OSS people like writing stuff that they can actually use themselves. Sun likes making money, so Sun does their thing.

I wish Sun had more of a Linux movement, but I suppose Solaris and BSD are really the only things out there that can compete with Linux and more, and Sun wants to keep their sunk investment in place.

Launch = Start = Sigh

[h00pla]

I know this kind of desktop is supposed to give MS refugees a warm, fuzzy feeling, but I am so sick of the Start/Launch/[Whatever] button. Sheesh! Free yourselves from this Microsoft cloning and get something like Fluxbox.

Re:Launch = Start = Sigh

[jeffehobbs]

No KIDDING. How totally, completely dull. Congratulations, you've slavishly copied Windows 95; now how about doing something, anything else... linux has so much potential to be the back end to a truly revolutionary user interface, but it seems to be stuck on the "give the users what they know" stage -- even if what they know is a retarded, confusing GUI mess. What year is this again?

Apple got a lot of flack for interface changes in MacOS X, and some of that flack was for good reason, but at least they tried, and continue to be trying; check out Expose for a great example. I'd love to see some of that kind of innovation coming from the Linux camp, there would be a hell of a lot more reason to "switch" (or at least check out linux at all) if there was some easily demonstrable reason it was better than Windows/MacOS X/etc.

For most Americans, if "free" is not compelling enough then "equal" is probably not compelling enough either; there has to be something tangible linux offers that they can't get on their existing platform. And this ain't it.

~jeff

Re:Launch = Start = Sigh

[garcia]

this is Insightful?

People do NOT care about "freeing themselves from MS", they don't care about speed (we have insanely fast CPUs now), and they certainly don't want anything other than what they already are used to.

People HATED XP when it first came out (and most still do) because it was "different" and they couldn't find anything.

We have seen plenty of articles on here about how people are finding applications easily when switching from Windows-based OSs. They find the "start menu", they then find applications that are "familiar".

You think that a "freed desktop look" is going to have easy to find applications that are familiar?

We want people to switch but we don't want to make that switch easy? Get real.

Re:Launch = Start = Sigh

[xigxag]

Yeah, I'd like to see a major Linux player working on something beyond the bitmapped desktop. If Apple can do it, surely IBM with its vast resources can get cracking in this arena. Even the alleged copycat Microsoft is actively developing a scalable desktop solution for Longhorn. How about SVG? Any implementations of that on the desktop in development?

Re:Why would anyone support this?

[garcia]

I wouldn't want to support someone so wishy washy

You might not (and the rest of the "community") but the real world people do want to listen to Sun.

it's the apps interface

[b17bmbr]

the interface that matters is the applications' interfaces. people are familiar with office. hell, ask most of the windows users if they can do mroe than minimize and close a window and they'll say no. most people are accustomed to a particular application. especially office. sun would be better off just to map /home to /My Documents and make the OO.org UI as identical to office as legally possible. this is even more true for more specific apps,like accounting apps, what have you. that is what holds linux adoption back. most people don't even "use" the operating system, nor do they even care to. they use a tool. they could really care less what the OS is. in fact, they only know what it is when it does nasty things.

You press start to stop the computer

[yerricde]

It's VERY well done, and some of the things (like the start menu and the systray) are very well done.

You press start to stop the computer.

You press start... to stop the computer!

And pressing the Logo key between Ctrl and Alt will unceremoniously dump the player out of a fast-action full-screen game.

The "standard" Windows GUI, is quite good though.

The graphical shell lacks some things. Does it have a way to search for file names by regular expressions, by exact substring/phrase, or even by all the words? I can't get Windows 2000 to search by anything other than any of the word stems.

Re:You press start to stop the computer

[fault0]

I really doubt that a company that current has more than 90% market share, and focuses it's products on 90% of the populace are going to worry about an obscure feature such as regular expressions that only 1% of the populace uses.

But hey, that's just me.

Re:You press start to stop the computer

[fault0]

Microsoft implemented these kitchen sync features in Office in order to defeat its competitiors in market share. Most of these features had already appeared by Office95 when Microsoft really started dominating the Office Suite market.

Since then, there really hasn't been a competitor to Office that offers all of its features or has made any sort of dent in its market share, so Microsoft hasn't really had much of a compulsion to add a whole bunch of new features to its core Office apps (word/excel/PP). If you've not noticed by now, most of Office has been in maintainance mode for a long time. All Microsoft has done since Office97 is make the interface of the new versions of Office match the new versions of Windows and other related technologies.

Re:You press start to stop the computer

[leonardop]

... are going to worry about an obscure feature such as regular expressions that only 1% of the populace uses

All flammable opinions aside, this is a very sad fact (I don't know if 1% is correct, but the point is still valid).

To some extent, regexps suffer from the same problem many Free Software projects do, and it's that a lot of people simply don't want to get very far along the learning curve. We tend to live the moment and try to get the job done as fast as possible, so investing time learning something useful is usually pretty hard, no matter how blatantly obvious the potential benefits are.

Imagine how much efficiency could be gained from teaching at least some basic regexp skills to secretaries, just to mention one example.

Actually, many of us who use regexps everyday, still do it poorly sometimes.

Jeffrey Friedl put it clearly in his book "Mastering Regular Expressions":

You might think that with their wide availability, general popularity, and unparalleled power, regular expressions would be employed to their fullest, wherever found. You might also think that they would be well documented, with introductory tutorials for the novice just starting out, and advanced manuals for the expert desiring that little extra edge. Sadly, that hasn't been the case.

Re:You press start to stop the computer

[PhoenixK7]

"All Microsoft has done since Office97 is make the interface of the new versions of Office match the new versions of Windows and other related technologies."

Actually, one of the things I find the most aggravating about Office XP is that the UI color scheme and widgets in Windows XP and Office XP do not match. They're different. Why did they bother?

On the topic of stuff that's been in maintenance mode, the damn equation editor still sucks and has plenty of wacky rendering issues, and it has had them for the past few versions. Come on guys, on the Windows side we've been through Office 95, 97, 2000, and XP. With XP coming out in either 2001 or 2002 (can't recall) we've had _6_ or _7_ years to work out bugs like these and they're still there. It doesn't really crash anymore, but you'd expect more polish out of this thing.

Re:You press start to stop the computer

[Pseudonym]

You press start to stop the computer.

So? I've been quitting programs for a decade or so using the "File" menu. Since when has quitting a program been a file operation?

The semantics of "Start" is that to do anything, you "start here". That actually makes more sense to me than putting Quit under the File menu.

Re:You press start to stop the computer

[babbage]

I really doubt that a company that current has more than 90% market share, and focuses it's products on 90% of the populace are going to worry about an obscure feature such as regular expressions that only 1% of the populace uses.

Not that I disagree with you, but there is precedent for this at Microsoft.

There was an interesting interview a couple of years back -- I apologize for not googling for a URL, but it's been too long and I remember it too vaguely -- where one of the project managers for Microsoft Office acknowledged that the suite is, as many people accuse, bloated with features, 90% of which the average user never takes advantage of.

Of course that's a problem, and they were willing to try to fix it. The problem was, they did some user testing, and learned a curious thing: while pretty much all users felt that a suite with 10% of the functionality would meet their needs, every user had a different idea about what 10% should be kept & which 90% should go.

It turned out that, as bloated as Office is, there was some portion of the user population interested in each part of the available functionality, and that would have been unhappy (possibly unhappy enough to seek out an alternative product) if that functionality was removed.

Purging the suite would have been a bigger problem than the bloat itself.

The solution that they came up with was a more modular installer, first seen (as far as I can recall) with Win2000/Office2000, where the user could select which subsystems to install, which to permanently ignore, and which to allow to be installed on demand. [Ironically, this modular installer would be a perfect tool for the "thousands of versions of Windows" canard that MS execs started crying about when the government threatened to enforce the anti-trust decision; thankfully for MS they were able to afford an administration that would let them go about their business, illegal or not.]

---

But anyway, to go back to the point: yes, things like a regex engine would be of interest to only a small subset of the Windows userbase, but it wouldn't be the first time that a feature made it into the system that a similar small slice of the userbase would be interested in. (As another commenter noted, a regex engine would be at least as popular as, say, MIDI support.)

Personally, I think Microsoft is heading in exactly this direction -- or at least, parts of the heterogeneous behemoth that is Microsoft are collectively staggering in this direction. As was noted in articles here last year, and as confirmed by ongoing job postings on Microsoft's Indian Development Center, Microsoft is studying which aspects of Linux and the typical Linux command shell (bash, tcsh, ksh etc) appeal most to users, and seems to be working on bringing these ideas into a future version of Windows. Consider this quote from the above linked MS-India jobs site:

The Microsoft Next Generation Shell Team is designing and developing a new command line scripting environment from the ground up. The new shell and utilities, based on the .NET Frameworks, will provide a very rich object-based mechanism for managing system properties. To be delivered in the next release of Windows, it will include the attributes of shells (e.g. aliases, job control, command substitution, pipelines, regular expressions, transparent remote execution) plus rich features based on Windows and .NET (e.g. command discovery via .NET reflection API's, object-based properties/methods, 1:many server scripting, pervasive auto-complete).

Microsoft realizes that a big reason for OSX's popularity is that it's a soft creamy interface wrapped around a tasty, crunchy tcsh shell, and they want to bring some of that appeal to

Re:Looks to much like Windows 95

[de Selby]

This looks like a step backwards compared to Mac OS X, RedHat's Bluecurve, or early screen shots of longhorn.

I guess that depends on what you think of OSX, Bluecurve and Longhorn. :)

Seriously though, I think interfaces have just been getting worse. (Ex: OSX, WinXP.) Someone really needs to cull the eye candy from the default setup and instead go back to ease of use.

Re:Why would anyone support this?

[neo]

"I wouldn't want to support someone so wishy washy "

If it were one person acting this way I'd agree with you, but it's a corporation. I have no problem with seeing part of that corporation survive while other parts become extinct. That's more likely to happen if you support the part that's making the right decisions.

This actually looks viable...

[deviator]

This desktop is not targeted at most readers of /. - so don't judge it based on what _you'd_ like your desktop to be.

Linux will _never_ gain any major ground in the coporate desktop world until it looks and feels like Windows. Most non-computer-industry types do not like change--no matter what the benefits are. This project appears to fill that very important hole - something that's almost a Windows "workalike" while eschewing any proprietary Microsoft code.

This *looks* good, a bit cleaner than WinXP & it is laid out a bit nicer. Things like "This Computer" instead of the pandering, cheesier "My Computer" set it apart yet the thing looks instantly familiar to anyone who has used Windows.

Kudos to Sun for finally getting the desktop right.

Re:This actually looks viable...

[penguin7of9]

Kudos to Sun for finally getting the desktop right.

Have you ever actually used any of Sun's user interfaces? SunView, OpenWindows, NeWS, Swing, OpenOffice? I don't think they have ever gotten user interfaces "right", and I seriously doubt they have gotten this one right.

Gnome by itself seems much more consistent and usable than any mix of Java, OpenOffice, and Gnome could ever be. Keep in mind that Java and OpenOffice don't even use the native Gnome toolkit or libraries.

gaack

[sootman]

Can we *please* not end every Linux desktop submission with "[perhaps this] could make Linux on the corporate desktop and laptop a bigger reality."?!?!?!

*If* it happens (and that's a big "if") it'll take years, and it's entirely likely that it won't. Assuming Microsoft has only 90% desktop marketshare, that's 10% split among Apple, Linux, etc. That means *no one* is even *close* to MS's dominance on the desktop. (Remember the Princess Bride? Think "land war in Asia") So why does anyone think Sun or Mandrake or anyone else is going to be the one who makes PHBs say "Well, gee, if Sun is behind it, I'll switch everything tomorrow!"?

I like Linux as much as the next guy, but this pie-eyed optimism is not getting anyone anywhere. Hell, headlines here oughtta read "Company X introduces Linux desktop that's nicer than last year's; world continues not to care."

Re:gaack

[wytcld]

As someone who immediately liked Linux because it was so much like ZCPR (a CP/M replacement far better than DOS ever became) I can see the point of having Linux be familiar to Doze users. As someone who once accepted that there'd never be a future without 1-2-3 being the spreadsheet and WordPerfect writing the texts, I can tell you that present dominance is no guarantee of future success.

How did Word take over from WordPerfect? Word always assumed the user didn't want to learn so much. For command line users this was the wrong assumption - people who "talk" to their machines tend to enjoy learning. But it turned out to be just the right assumption once we went visual and pointing began to suffice for communication. Companies started firing their secretaries and having execs do their own typing, and the execs just wanted to get the job done the simplest way. Then they wanted to have the remaining secretaries' docs be compatible, so they forced stupidifying software on them too. In Word-land, document writes you.

Hello. Cheap, fast, free, doesn't catch viruses, doesn't crash ... if Linux can add "and you don't have to hardly learn anything" plus the obvious advantage of being more compatible with your company geeks, it could take over within two years, the same as Win/Word/Excel did. And old farts like me can fire up jstar and pretend we're back on an old hotrodded WordStar ZCPR system.

sorry, but this interface for me

[fault0]

actually looks like a step back from CDE.

I've never said that about any other interface, considering how I hate CDE :-)

It looks like a cheap clone of win95, just not properly done and with inconsistancies everywhere. I think they should have just used bluecurve or something like that.

Annoying that it's Gnome

[soloport]

Ok, I know I'm going to be flammed for this one, but here goes:

Please, Gnome developers, switch Cancel and Ok to a consistent Ok(LHS) and Cancel(RHS)... Please?!!!

So annoying! I'd use Gnome, be proud of it and recommend to all, if not for this one, single, pull-my-hair-out irritation.

As it is, every time I try to introduce Gnome to someone (Mac or Windows user), that's the first place they stumble. Then I have to say, "Well... Eheh... Why don't we try KDE. Mk?".

Look, it sure seems that the whole left-to-right-reading world thinks this way. I think Gnome is a terrific windowing environment, otherwise.

[puts asbestos suit on, real fast]

Re:Annoying that it's Gnome

[tempest303]

This is actually pushed in GNOME, and is part of the GNOME HIG (Human Interface Guidelines)!

Re:Annoying that it's Gnome

[Varitek]

the correct way to do it would not be with simplistic "yes/no/cancel" dialogs, but with verbs

It also makes it easier to translate. I'm part of the team translating gnome into Welsh. Welsh doesn't have a word for "Yes", it has words for "Yes it is" and "Yes I would" and "Yes there is", etc.

A dialog box with Yes/No/Cancel in Gnome should have a bug filed against it.

And a midi device routing capability

[Ayanami Rei]

should be built into it too?

I bet less than 1% of the population needs that extra flexibility in the Multimedia Settings control panel.

What IS microsoft's aversion to regular expressions?

Cygwin issues

[yerricde]

install cygwin

I do not have permission to install software on a significant number of Windows computers that I use. And does Cygwin (including its installer) work well on Windows 9x, on computers that connect to the Internet through dialup, or on computers whose Internet access is filtered to a whitelist of approved web sites? And is Cygwin XFree86 mature enough to be usable for everyday work?

New life for Sun hardware

[sbszine]

I don't think this is going to overtake RedHat any day soon, but it's good news for me and people in a similar situation. I've been having lots of trouble getting Linux working on my Sparc Ultra 5, because everything is optimised for 32-bit i86 platforms. I'd would love to have the goodness of Linux optimised for my lovely Sun hardware. Sun's problem was always the software rather than the hardware, and this looks like the best of both worlds.

Cancel and OK placement

[LauraW]

>Please, Gnome developers, switch Cancel and Ok to a consistent Ok(LHS) and Cancel(RHS)... Please?!!!

There's actually some fairly solid UI research that says the OK button should usually be on the RHS of a dialog. People who speak and read left-to-right languages like English tend to scan a dialog box from upper-left to lower-right, and their brains really want to click on whatever is in the lower-right corner of the dialog. Thus, the default button (usually OK) should almost always go there.

I remember reading this in a book on user interface design about 10 or 15 years ago. I think the research was done at apple, but it wasn't an Apple book. It was a collection of articles in a big blue paperback with a poorly-designed walk/don't-walk sign on the cover, but I can't remember the title. Now I may have to go dig through the boxes in my closet.

The Start button gap

[yerricde]

The long answer ultimately has to do with usability studies.

Then why, in Windows 2000 Explorer as configured by default, is there a 1-pixel gap between the corner of the screen and the Start menu? It would be nicer if I could slam the mouse pointer against the upper left and then click (Fitts's Law states that the corners are among the easiest screen pixels to hit), but no. Microsoft had to put in a gap between the screen edge and the Start button that does nothing but slow things down.

And why, in the taskbar, does a selected program lighten in Windows 2000 but darken in Windows XP? That difference confuses me every time I work at an XP machine.

Suns commitment, SCO

[ultrabot]

Anyone wonder how Sun is suddenly making so much noise about Linux? They expect us to ignore all the recent backstabbing efforts (regarding SCO FUD) by merely distracting our attention with pretty toys?

Expect a statement along the lines of "but to really get the benefit of the cutting edge Mad Hatter, along with a robust, industrial strength OS, take a look at this Solaris-x86 over here..."

Sun certainly has a trust problem to deal with.

Re:There's more to it than just that...

[fishbot]

The point isn't to secure the machine, but to secure the user's logged in session. If I have some personal emails open with the screen locked, and the best a would be attacker can do is kill the X session, my data is still safe.

Having said that, if someone leaves a terminal logged in, you can Ctrl-Alt-F* to it and type 'killall xlock' or 'killall xscreensaver' and it releases the X desktop back for normal use.

Re:Already Switched / Best Home Distro?

[RedBear]

The grandparent post may be a troll, but if so it's a troll with a damn good point, and one that most of us probably wouldn't have identified as a troll. I know I found myself reading along with such gems as:

Next it was time for getting the pics off my digital camera. I have a USB Compact Flash reader plugged into the USB port. I stuck the compact flash card in and the harddrive blinked a bit but nothing mounted. After digging around in /proc a bit, I figured out that the USB reader gets mapped to a SCSI device. (emphasis added) A simple:

mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/camera

and VIOLA! Pictures!

I have had to do exactly that, and the same goes for a lot of the other things he talks about. This is where you're average user will be saying, "The proc what?" And I'm using Mandrake 9.1, which most of us I believe would think of as one of the easiest distros to use.

It has to be said, over and over again whenever an article like this comes up: Linux has a loooooong way to go to create a usable desktop in the same sense that a Windows or Mac desktop is usable. Now, pardon me while I return to my MDK9.1 desktop, to watch my movies, surf the web and pull the pictures off my camera by opening Konsole and typing "mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/camera". Once you've figured it out, it's so easy!

Looks very nice...

[dnaumov]

I think that the only "serious" Linux desktop is provided by RedHat. Mandrake just doesn't cut it and Ximian does not make a Linux distribution. Judhing from the screenshots, I can hope that there will soon finally be a viable alternative to the BlueCurve desktop. Personally, I wish SUN best of luck with this venture.