Mad Hatter Preview - Sun Java Desktop System Demo

bengine writes "According to this article, Sun Java Desktop System is a good product overall, built on the well-established SuSE system with integration from Sun. It delivers what appears to be a very useful desktop OS and it has the chance to make a dent in the Windows monopoly. But Sun will have to differentiate itself on its quality, hardware, services and reputation. That means a lot of hard work, so the key questions will be how well they execute their strategy, how much public acceptance they gain and what message they convey through public venues." This makes a good companion to the earlier story linking to Mad Hatter screenshots.

Comments

It's still GNOME.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is there a need to preview so many GNOME Desktops under different name ? GNOME is GNOME no matter what company forks it. As soon as GNOME 2.6 comes out SUN, Ximian or Red Hat gonna fork it again for their Desktop. So if you want to know how each new GNOME looks like then please go and look inside the real GNOME and not some lame forks which changes anyways as soon as the core releases a new version.

Re:It's still GNOME.

[swordboy]

GNOME is GNOME no matter what company forks it.

Ummm... No...

Big Businesses want other Big Businesses to back their software. You won't see any announcements from GM stating that they've decided to run Linux From Scratch or Gentoo. With Sun, you've got a reputable brick-and-mortar establishment to go to when it breaks.

Unfortunately for Sun, they are quickly losing their big-business reputation. This is their last hope, IMHO.

Off topic - if Apple were to port OSX to X86 commodity hardware, I'm sure that we'd have a lot of businesses jumping on board - especially in the light of the "Homogenous Windows Environments Are Bad" article. It just makes good sense.

Java?

[Dreadlord]

When I read the article for the first time I thought it was an OS that most of its apps are Java or something, but it turned out to be a Linux distro, with the most common Linux apps (GNOME, Mozilla, Evolution)
Anyway, it still looks like a good choice for desktops, I think I'll try to test it as soon as it's available.

Star Office

[matchlight]

The author states The Open Office Team and the Sun Microsystems developers must be working in Tandem to make their suites more accessible to the public. but from the Open Office website:
StarDivision, the original author of the StarOffice suite of software, was founded in Germany in the mid-1980s. It was acquired by Sun Microsystems during the summer of 1999 and StarOffice 5.2 was released in June of 2000. Future versions of StarOffice software, beginning with 6.0, have been built using the OpenOffice.org source, APIs, file formats, and reference implementation.

Don't marketers understand brand management?

[dpbsmith]

When you have a brand name that actually means something to the public, and you try to perform a "line extension" by applying that brand name to more or less unrelated products that do not share the characteristics with which the brand is associated, you don't enhance the value of the brand, you diminish it.

Diet Coke, Cherry Coke, Vanilla Coke, by all means, but there's a good reason why Coca-Cola Corporation calls their orange juice "Minute Maid" and not "Orange Coke."

Sun's calling everything "Java" is almost as bad as Microsoft trying to appropriate the top-level-domain .net and apply it to some inchaote mass of technology.

Calling everything Sun does "Java" may please the ego of whatever manager is empowered to stick the name "Java" on stuff, but it won't do Sun, or Sun's customers, or the Java "brand" any good.