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.

Re:It's still GNOME.

[sufehmi]

What counts are the extra customizations that's done to it. It may be small things here-and-there, but overall, it may differentiate a distro significantly than others.

If you aim at Windows desktop, you need to make the transition as painless as possible.
The list is long - relevant right-click menus, copy/paste that works across all apps, ability to create shortcuts on desktop easily, consistent drag-and-drop, etc, etc.

Also for corporations, there are other things that counts.

Some companies may already implemented centralized workstations management - ZENworks, MS-SMS, etc. These software enable IT depts to efficiently manage thousands of desktop with minimum number of staff.
I've personally used ZENworks and I can say that I haven't found anything similar on Linux - CMIIW.
You can kinda centrally manage your workstations by implementing LTSP (and others), but this tops out at 150 workstations per server. When you have 15000 desktop, the last thing you need is additional 100 servers to manage.
Also it may prove too bandwidth-intensive for WAN-wide deployment.

Another issue is authentication.
For example, for Novell customers, they'll have problems. There are various Novell client for Linux, but they may only work using IPX (IPX is all trouble on WAN), and/or still in beta version, and/or doesn't provide access to printers, etc.
Also authenticating to the latest version of ActiveDirectory - I don't know if SAMBA support it, but I don't think so.
Etc.

If a company can provide the solution to these kind of issues, especially since Sun is aiming at corporate market (I believe), then they'll have a winner.

Article text.

[ideatrack]

I finally received the Mad Hatter Preview in the mail this weekend. I couldn't wait to get this demo out and actually test the software, hoping that this would answer some questions that I had about the product. I was somewhat surprised to find a Live CD version of Mad Hatter instead of an actual beta, but that's okay, I could still see what it was, even if I cannot truly install it. The truly nice thing about Live CD's is that they don't require that much space to get the flavor of the system. In other words, you really do not make any significant changes to an existing machine.

The folks at Sun were even nice enough to name the files that are created on your machine in the C: drive (for Windows types) or your Linux / partition. The files can be deleted when you are finished navigating the demo CD, which makes this a handy demo for anyone wanting to show the system to someone without having to carry a computer around to demo the product.

The demo is only available in English, but that is not a real problem for a native speaker. I suppose the foreign markets will see other versions become available when the Java(TM) Desktop System reaches GA. The functionality of the system is somewhat limited because it is a demo, but there are some interesting things that have been added to the GNOME2 based desktop.

The obvious additions include the Star Office 7 Office Suite, Sun Microsystems latest version of Star Office - the product which led to Open Office (actually I think it Was Star Office 5.2 originally). The Open Office Team and the Sun Microsystems developers must be working in Tandem to make their suites more accessible to the public. The only problem I have with the Live CD is that I cannot install the Star Office 7 product to demo it (it takes more space than is allocated for the install in demo mode). Other than this minor annoyance for demo purposes, the system works well.

There are several things that Sun has added into their desktop that are not standard and are third-party add-ons. For one thing, they do install and integrate many of the commercial plugins that most Linux distributions do not install by default. Among them are the Macromedia plugins, several music and audio plugins as well as Real Player plugins. All of these plugins are integrated with Mozilla 1.4 and work out of the box (or in this case, on the Live CD).

These third=party add-ons or add-ins (however you wish to say it) are licensed and those licenses are described within the Third Party License README file. The various license for each piece of the puzzle are there, and given in full, for your reading pleasure. For those of you that thought there might be some license from the SCO Group for whatever they are claiming - they are not mentioned at all (enough said about that sore subject).

The Sun team has done a polished job of integrating their software into the GNOME2 environment, and has made some very nice changes here and there. Some of the third party Java(TM) add-ons are rather "nice to have" if not fully functional on the Live CD. Among these is JDisk Report from JGoodies as licensed from the Karsten Lentzsch and included within the Live CD environment (though not functional there).

The effect of that product was viral, I did go out and download JDisk Report 1.1.1 for myself (it is Freeware) for my own disk analysis on my machines. It is a rather nice thing to have.

The desktop is nothing unfamiliar to anyone who has ever used a Linux system before, and I don't see it as a giant hurdle for anyone who is used to a Windows environment. Heck, if my wife can pick up a Linux box running with GNOME2 and not have a problem, I suppose anyone can. My wife has never considered herself a computer whiz, but she did appreciate the fact that Linux doesn't crash and for the most part is just a "pick up and go" OS that remains available. The only downtime we experienced this year has been due to outside factors. We have lost our cable several times due to the virus outbreaks that really slammed

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

[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.

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.

Premonition

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

/me sees a McBride Press Realese in the near future...

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.