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Java Desktop System Rivals XP, OSX in Usability
protohiro1 writes "In this glowing review Chris Gulker calls Sun's Java Desktop System 'the most polished and real-world user-ready Linux desktop in existence.' Well, I'm sold. Will this finally sell the PHBs on a linux corporate desktop?" Newsforge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN.
If you don't want companies to be able to make profit from your code then you should choose a more appropriate license. If you choose the GPL (or similar) then you choose to let companies profit from you code.
>> Since it's not free I actually feel it's a rip-off and a major vendor lock-in. JVMs running everywhere on your machine.
Hmm. Those two statements don't match.
It's vendor lock-in because it's $50/year licencing. Migrating away is a matter of installing Linux, Gnome and Java and running the same applications on those.
What you'll lose are the Sun additions that make it so cheap to maintain, sort out usability, etc. But that's why they're charging for it.
JVMs running everywhere is such a non-issue I'm confused by you raising it. You are aware that there are multiple sources of JVMs, and they all work identically?
~Cederic
Try supporting a multi-thousand desktop environment. You really really DON'T want users customising and modifying their desktop environment.
- standard roll-outs of apps no longer work or take considerably longer development effort
- training becomes more of a pain
- people spend all day changing their settings instead of being productive
- people change things so they no longer work, then ring up and complain that things no longer work (cost for helpdesk, for people to go out and fix it, etc)
The lack of customisation is a big bonus in an enterprise corporate environment.
For the record, I always customise my desktop, its appearance, and do naughty things like installing my own web browser instead of using the corporate standard. Which is why I always argue that development boxes (which I use) shouldn't have the same constraints that standard users boxes have. Double-standards, etc
~Cederic
From the article:
>> Java Desktop System could be dropped into most non-technical enterprises in places where general productivity was the mission,
What he misses (like nearly all of the Linux On The Corporate Desktop advocates) is that nearly every small business uses some sort of vertical-market application as their central IS system. There are packages for real estate agents, beverage wholesalers, dental offices, auto repair shops, property management, and for practically every other business you can think of. And nearly all of them run on Windows.
Every small business I've ever worked with uses something like this, and that's always the obstacle to having such companies even consider Linux.
Perhaps as more of these are moved to an HTTP-based architecture, the doors will open for Linux on the business desktop, but until then, the real lock-in isn't MS Office but the zillions of vertical-market apps that run on Windows.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I am sick and tired of hearing all this Sun-bashing from a bunch of half-witted Slashbots.
Sun has contributed more to the open source community than IBM.
- We could of course start with classics like NFS and NIS, which appear pretty much everywhere specifically because Sun open sourced them.
- You think GNOME made such a vast improvement between 1.x and 2.x because a bunch of kids wrote code in their spare time? Sun has a lot of people working feverishly on GNOME. That's why it's so damn polished these days. Sun also contributed nearly all of the new accessibility features, which is a requirement to get in the door for some of those government contracts we want so desperately to see Linux win right now.
- Ever heard of OpenOffice? Do you think Linux has even a ghost of a chance on the mainstream desktop without it? (If you answered yes, please take your KOffice CD and your delusions elsewhere.) We have Sun, and only Sun, to thank for freeing this absolutely crucial piece of software.
Sun's biggest liability is Scott McNealy's big mouth. Everyone knows that, and hopefully Sun will wise up someday and either replace him or find a way to get him to quiet down. But to paint Sun as a big advocate of closed software and lock-in, similar to Microsoft or SCO, is beyond stupid. It's just plain hypocritical. Sun's attitude towards Linux is a bit schizophrenic, but they are not the enemy. They may not have gotten up the guts to slap a GPL on the Java runtime, but that doesn't mean they're not a big contributor to the open source pool in other places.Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!