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

I wouldn't worry about making a dent

[tommasz]

This is clever, and it's nice to see that it works, but Java? Most people's experience with Java is waiting forever for some applet to load on a web page only to discover it tells them what time it is. I can't see how they're going to convince Joe Average that this is somehow a competitive advantage, no matter how smoothly integrated the entire package is.

Re:I wouldn't worry about making a dent

[bersl2]

Most people's experience with Java is waiting forever for some applet to load on a web page only to discover it tells them what time it is.

Most people probably couldn't match Java's issues with the name. To them, it's just another faceless technology.

Also, these are the same people who put up with endless crashes and reboots in the Win9x series...

Re:I wouldn't worry about making a dent

[PhantomBlot]

Whether or not Mad Hatter (Java Desktop System) makes a dent in the Windows install base is all a matter of how Sun approaches the who and the how of selling this. For the most part, the target would likely be Enterprise customers and not Joe Average (although Joe Average could buy one if he really wanted to I'm sure). If Sun goes after these customers with an agressive pricing strategy and with sound technical facts to back them up (easy to come by with the recent barrage of attacks on Windows machines), then perhaps they could do fairly well. So far the plan seems good. The platform itself is for the x86 although you can get all of the pieces for SPARC Solaris. Also, it is based on GNOME and all of those nice freebies out there (it is NOT a bunch of Java Apps so performance concerns are minimal). The licensing fees are astronomically low due to the fact that everything is based on an Open Source project. Really, this is why Joe Average is probably not the target audience since he could download all of this stuff for free and install it but the Enterprise customer is compelled to have a service agreement incase something goes wrong (which is largely why StarOffice manages to coexist with OpenOffice). Anyway, could it make a dent? If executed correctly, absolutely. Many of you out there are probably the same as me and have had no problem converting friends and families to apps like Mozilla from IE based on the simple fact that Mozilla is better. This is much the same...Sun just has to work a little harder to convince there audience because Windows is Windows...and that is sure to be a huge sticking point for most customers.

Re:I wouldn't worry about making a dent

[An dochasac]

There is a difference. Think of these "branding" terms:

"Windows" Perfected by Xerox, Apple, Amiga and Sun before it was adopted and branded my Microsoft.
".Net"Sun was there, Netscape was there, Al Gore may have even involved in the beginnings of the internet. Microsoft was dragged kicking and screaming into "the Net" in the late 1990s, but that didn't stop Microsoft marketeers from trying to brand it when the NET hype-quotient reached a peak.
"Java"Invented by Sun, branded by Sun. Why shouldn't they call this a Java desktop? It's certainly a decent platform for running java client software, its less expensive than Microsoft based desktops and its unlikely Sun will actively try to break your Java client applications. Java is a decent technology for writing secure, stable applications. Sun shouldn't hide from this fact or let everyone else profit from it. Java will work even better when the desktop OS vendor isn't actively trying to break your applications. As for speed, try one of the built-in Java apps or any well-written Java app before you post. I find ImageJ (http://rsb.info.nih.gov/ij) as fast as Gimp or Photoshop on other platforms.

Re:I wouldn't worry about making a dent

[PhantomBlot]

I aplogize for the formatting. That was my first post here although I've been reading for quite a while. That's why I'm glad that others have interjected to clarify and cutoff the negative path this discussion was being sent.

If Sun sticks something in the JDS (like StarOffice), then chances are it is based on an OpenSource project. Look at Sun ONE Studio (Netbeans) as well. I've been using what is essentially MadHatter on my Ultrasparc for about 6 months now mostly done with OpenSource projects (I do use StarOffice though and not Open Office).

Also, as pointed out the Java Enterprise System has nothing to with the JDS (see rugwuk's reply). It is comprised of things like Solaris and Sun ONE App Server. The basic idea for that is to give customers a well tested and stable reference implementation.

I never said it was an Enterprise Application, I said it was targeted as Enterprise customers (see hackstraw's reply). This has been well stated by Scott McNealy and other Sun execs. You are not going to see Sun sales people running off to Best Buy trying to get them to stock Mad Hatter machines in the near future.

Anyway, I've been following the JDS project for a while and I know it fairly well so that's why I chose to comment (granted, I still may be mistaken in a few places). It is intended to attack Windows from a monetary perpective (via much smaller licensing fees) and not so much from a "blow you away" feature perpective...even though it is very strong in that regard (I like it much better than Windows myself).

Re:Dent in the Windows monopoly?

[lederhosen]

It was previewed on an x86 computer...

WTF is this SUN Java name?

[pirhana]

I find the name "SUN Java Desktop" really ridiculous. Its as stupid as calling Toyota Land Cruiser "SONY SUV" for the Sony sterio system used in it.

Re:Article text.

[DavidNWelton]

So it's a warmed over Suse desktop. What actually differentiates it from Suse aside from including some proprietary browser plugins and some java freeware?

Re:OS X....

[hype7]

on the subject, there's a great article over at InternetWeek.com by David Strom, entitled Java On The Desktop: An Idea Whose Time Has Come ... And Gone.

Basically: Sun should give up trying to win the desktop wars; if they want a good, non-MS desktop, they should back OS X and focus on the stuff that they've always done well. This is just a diversion for Sun, it's going to sap their resources and when it doesn't work it's just going to be another feather in the cap for the "Sun is dying" camp.

-- james

Sun Java whoosy?

[Kujah]

Wasn't it Sun who recently suffered a major blow to their java language, when it was discovered that the java interpreter that ran on their own operating system (Solaris) was slower than the interpreter created for windows?

Re:Article text.

[jeffkjo1]

With the nightmare that it is to install certain browser plugins in the downloadable version of SuSE 8.2, this is a feat in and of itself which makes the OS worth checking out.

RE: Java naming

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe Sun is using the Java naming because so many components are Java already, or will hopefully become Java-based in the future. For example, OpenOffice has a lot of components written in Java with tremendously tight Java integration. The SDK lets you do some really cool things. I used OpenOffice in server mode to automatically convert word, ppt, and excel docs submitted to a MySQL database into PDF. That way, they can be accessed from anywhere, and they are full-text searchable in the MySQL database, in addition to offering a really nice "preview" function. Also, Mozilla has many many parts of it written in Java.

Re:Article text.

[anno1a]

I've actually gotten my hands on the installable beta. The install seems pretty decent. It's easy, and it leaves your windows drives alone, unless you tell it otherwise. Everything is extremely simple, with a little "detailed" button you can click, if you are an experienced user.

I was surprised to see that the installation automatically detected and installed the wireless network adapter on my laptop, something I haven't seen any other distribution do (even though the driver is ready in the kernel).

The rest of the installation went flawless (except for a hitch with starsuite, which for some reason was in chinese, but I'll leave that to the beta-testers).

For some reason SUN has decided to provide the Java Media Player as the default media player. This would be just fine, if it in any way matched with the overall system design, or if it could play all media, but a simple test proved that it couldn't even play a standard (if such a thing exists) divx file. It worked fine with Ogg Vorbis and mpeg though. I wasn't able to find a dvd-player, xmms wasn't installed, and I could find no other media players besides the already mentioned java media player. If they want to win on the desktop, one thing SUN seriously needs is the capability to play media files using a pretty functional player (xmms for music is the obvious choice).

The entire desktop is seemingly a clone of the basic windows desktop with "this computer", "Documents", "Network Places" and "Trash". Exactly as I remember windows, just with slightly altered names. You even have a control panel (called preferences) in "This Computer".

Another problem I will leave to the beta testers is the fact that my DVD-drive is both mounted as cdrom and dvd, and thus also shown as two icons.

All in all a slick O/S, though with a few bumps which are hopefully straightened out through beta-testing, with a very bad choice of multimedia player (If anyone from SUN read this, go punch the guy who chose java media player in the stomache, and point him to xmms, mplayer and xine instead!).

Re:Article text.

[AKAImBatman]

$50-$100 *is* the price. You can continue support year after year by continuing to pay the $50-$100. IIRC, it's $50 per employee if you have the Java Enterprise already, and $100 per employee if you don't.

Hopefully we'll see this on Solaris

[Moderation abuser]

As well as having a full Linux distribution for Intel based kit. Buhbye CDE.

Architected correctly, the TCO for this Solaris or Linux will be low. Architected incorrectly you might as well not bother.

Re:Article text.

[LarsWestergren]

Thanks.

I'm not a fan of the subscription type of licence, but as I said, it is not that much money...

Re:Can we get away from the "Start Button"??

[WWWWolf]

Yeah. I've always found that the Window Maker way - getting the program menu by right-clicking desktop wherever you like - is the best. In fact, I installed LiteStep on Win98 just for that. (I don't care if alternative shells in Windows are only 99.9% convenient - I want my start menu placed where God intended...)

Another thing which I found pretty neat was the Indigo Magic Desktop's "Icon Catalog" application - small groups of icons arranged in a small window, with a tab row on the bottom for categories. Hopefully 5dwm will get along to reimplement it eventually =)