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Java Desktop System Review
Reader writes "OSNews has the first in-depth review of Sun's Java Desktop System based on the final code. The article discusses the good (stability, Star Office 7, good Java integration) and the bad (no KDE, buggy RealTek driver, shaky Samba) and it includes a number of screenshots. It seems that Sun has put all its attention on Gnome and while this is good for cosistency across their desktop (some of their Java apps use the native GTK+ themeing), it also limits its users from an out-of-the-box KDE and its thousands of apps choice."
What a weird-ass system. What the heck does grafting Java images into SuSE's Yast and a bastardized Gnome 2.4/2.2 have to do with a "Java Desktop"?
And that's a Good Thing(tm).
Now, before you flame me, that's absolutely NOT intended as a anti-KDE comment. It's simply that the Sun Java Desktop is not intended for hobbyists who are going to be installing random applications. It's intended to be used by organizations who will install it on everybody's machine (or a central server, or whatever), and that's it. Everybody's got the same stuff, and uses the same tools. Anything else is a support nightmare for a large organization, and eventually for Sun.
Er... did you notice the comment saying 'check this out: Five different java applications, 5 different theme styles...'?
Why does Sun insist on diluting the Java name? A very large percentage of non-programmers who know the term Java don't know the difference between it and JavaScript. Now they're doing it again with Java Desktop. Isn't having Microsoft trying to kill Java enough without trying to do it themselves?
You are absolutely right. A corporate desktop is a support nightmare if it isn't locked down and standardized. It would have been nice if Sun provided recent copies of the KDE toolkit, however. It is likely that some corporation is going to deicde that they need a particular KDE app, and the sysadmin will then need to figure out how to deploy the toolkit and the app to thousands of machines without breaking any dependancies.
Please note that I am not arguing that the corporate user be able to run a KDE desktop/window manager. The corporate masters get the right to set the internal standards.
Shshhhhh dont tell anyone. What JDS *really* means is that Sun is going to be pushing GNU/Linux (aka Sun's JDS) onto tonnes of corporate desktops... further driving app development, OEM movement, driver development, etc etc etc.
I think this JDS crap is terrific, really, it means SUN is a finally a player in pushing Desktop GNU/Linux.. oh, drats, I mean JDS.
They better address this widespread concern!
Yeah this is flamebait but what the hell, I have plenty of karma to burn..
Why because she brings up things wrong with your precious linux distro's instead of lavishing praise all over them? She DARES to point out that something might be wrong with them? Every damm timee there's a OSnews review on slashdot people write about how much they hate ELQ largely, I think, because she tends to not write glowing reports abour their favorite distro.
ELQ might not be my favorite reviewer but one thing she does, and does well, is find any and all flaws in an OS. THat's what makes her a good reviewer.
You've got to sacrifice a little ease of use for a ton of usability in Linux. Linux is a very powerful OS in the right hands. OS X is less then par in that area, although it is extremely easy to use. The intents of both OSes are different. Anyway..back to the case in point. If you know what your doing in linux, overcoming something like what you cited isn't that big of a deal, but it can be a complicated process. But try installing two different versions of a Mac OS while keeping two separate boot loaders on two separate partitions on your computer and see how easy it is. The guy apparently knew what he was doing, and knew what he was getting himself into. Hate to tell you, but it wouldn't have been any easier to do what he did even if it was with a mac operating system. Anyone can format a harddrive, and install a linux distro from scratch on a clean system just as easy as anyother OS. Sun was correct in saying that his was a very special case.
BTW...watch your language, when you start your argument off like a moron, it automatically discredits anything else you may have to say.
First off, a review should have some sort of overview paragraph and not launch into a nit picky list of installation problems.
The reader wants to know:
1. what functionality/features are included
2. are the features/functionality any good
3. are there any problems (installation, running, etc)
4. anything else
If the sysadmins want to distribute KDE programs, then they'll need to also distribute the appropriate libraries.
See, the thing is, you're thinking about things like "well, what if a particular oganization likes konqueror better than nautilus?", and the reality is that by the time an org has chosen the JDS, that decision has already been made. "We chose the JDS, this is what is." Sun is not interested in selling this to a group of 4 geeks who will spend a week getting the colors just right. They want to roll this out to a thousand people at a time, who will write documents, make presentations, and use the company's internal webapps. If Mozilla ain't good enough to run those apps, they the company will NOT fsck around trying to paste Konqueror into the JDS, they will simply choose a different system that works.
In order for Linux to succeed in the corporate/home desktop environment there must be standards. This is exactly what Sun is attempting to do. Don't get me wrong, I love all the choices I have on my Linux box however the average user does not need all the extra features, programs, desktops, ect. Can you imagine if companies like HP, Gateway, or Dell released their own customized version of Windows? Yes Microsoft does allow some flexibility for the OEM's however it only goes so far. The user interface is basically the same on Win 9X-XP. This is why people stay with Windows.
The major thing I mind about Eugenia's reviews is they can belittle products for things that are very obscure. And they delve into the obscure RIGHT AWAY. In this article, the obscure is introduced in the second paragraph:
/dev/hdd3 as / (a single partition for / and /boot) and used a 512 MB /swap on /dev/hdd2. I told the boot manager to get installed on /dev/hdd3 as I don't want my existing bootmanager to get nuked."
"I installed it on
For starters, if you're going to review an OS, first install it on a machine on a blank hard drive on a machine that will *ONLY* be running the tested OS, do a fairly standard install. Talk about how that works. Then try and set it up the way you like it, the way you'd use it to do your daily work. Then go see how it interoperates on a machine with 17 other test operating systems on it.
I like the way the reviews go in depth about the OSes, I just find it annoying the way they are structured.
What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
Sun chose what they want to support and that is all they are including. There is nothing to stop you or anyone else from adding them in. Don't call Sun for support on them. If they included them, you would expect them to provide support wouldn't you?
They can't print documentation or provide meaningful support if they can't even pick a desktop environment to support. Basically JDS IS GNOME. How do you repackage GNOME yet leave KDE as an option? Sounds like that means not shipping a product at all. Sun wanted to package a (meaning "one") desktop environment, that pretty much implies picking one or the other. Since KDE is basically dead from the perspective of vendor distros, it seems they made the right choice.
ELQ might not be my favorite reviewer but one thing she does, and does well, is find any and all flaws in an OS. THat's what makes her a good reviewer.
...
One thing she really does is compare everything with BeOS and her husband's OS AtheOS.
She reviews Linux distributions from a naive user's point of view, criticizing the complexities of the Linux world, but then (in all her reviews) a rant at the end about how she won't be able to install the latest geek toys.
An example: The JDS is a Corporate Desktop System, developed to be used by employees who need a cloned environment where everything works exactly the same. It is a _real_ MS Windows replacement. But the review finishes with the tagline
"However, by not including the kdelibs and a newer Qt package, it rules out the ease of installing more Linux applications. Let's face it, at least 50-60% of the Linux GUI software today is written for the Qt toolkit and the KDE libs, for one or the other reason that I won't explain here. By not including KDE support, Sun immediately shred away the hopes of users to install more software! "
There are 2-3 third party Gnome GTK+ 1.x burning apps out there but they are outdated, difficult to use and ugly, while the KDE-based K3B is the one app on Linux that is powerful and pretty easy to use and that even does DVD burning too. There are other very good reasons for users to need KDE/Qt functionality (KStars, KDevelop, TheKompany apps etc)
Does the China goverment care about those apps? no.
Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
Yo d00d.
when you start your argument off like a moron, it automatically discredits anything else you may have to say.
he didn't really have much to say - the paragraph he quoted is EXACTLY why Linux is not on every desktop.
You've got to sacrifice a little ease of use for a ton of usability in Linux.
You must mean flexibility. There is NOTHING "useable" about messing with boot loaders.
Linux is a very powerful OS in the right hands. OS X is less then par in that area, although it is extremely easy to use.
Linux is just as good as the next *nix or BSD. It's not better, or worse. As far as OS X goes, it is also equally as powerful as Linux, and I'd say more so considering that it has a very coherent set of development tools available for it AND it is extremely easy to use. Clearly you have not spent any length of time using OS X.
Oh, BTW, using "then" instead of "than" tends to "discredit anything else you may have to say."
The intents of both OSes are different.
As it stands now, Linux is an OS X wannabe. Linux wants to have a nice UI, Linux wants to run games, and Linux wants to have a web browser that isn't slow as balls or, how about iTunes?
But try installing two different versions of a Mac OS while keeping two separate boot loaders on two separate partitions on your computer and see how easy it is.
While I'm sure this can be done, HELLO - why on earth would you need to?
Hate to tell you, but it wouldn't have been any easier to do what he did even if it was with a mac operating system.
Are you KIDDING ME? Have you installed OS X? Honestly it doesn't get any easier than OS X.
Sun was correct in saying that his was a very special case.
And this is no damn excuse. Special cases should be accounted for, and corrected! Just because it is Linux does NOT MEAN that it is magically exempted from NOT WORKING CORRECTLY.
Both of those "deficiencies" are plusses on a corporate desktop. There you do not want users installing random software apps and libraries (licensing issues aside, which are less relevant with OSS) -- it makes desktop support a nightmare.
You also don't need CD burning software. Most of those corporate desktop machines won't even have a CD burner installed, and you don't really want most employees burning random discs at work (of what? copied commercial CDs? confidential corporate data?).
The few employees that need that stuff -- e.g. developers in your IT department or people that need to burn the occasional presentation onto a disc -- can either install extra software themselves or are few enough in number for IT support to set up for them. (Or just install SUSE instead.)
-- Alastair
Whether users should be able to install software is obviously a seperate issue (qt doesn't allow users to install apps any more than gtk does).
So therefore the question isn't anything about users, it's whether Sun understand their market of corporate desktops, and whether Corps want to be able to add a few apps (as a standard across all their desktops) that aren't in GTK -- which is likely, and so Sun probably made a mistake and Eugenia is right.
If this system is targeted into corporate use, it need consistent clipboard support. Ctrl-c ctrl-v must work between all apps. Your typical Joe or Jenny Officeworker dont have patience or skill to play with X clipboard, he need easy way to copy pictures from his browser into spreadsheet, and spreadsheet into word processor.
Without this, most people will stick with their windoze boxes.
Let's see if I got this right...
Yeah, seems to work. Besides, what some people said about the corporate desktop having to be standardised: I only know university and research surroundings, but those desktops have to individualised at least for every workgroup. Yes, it does take a lot of admin work, but the needs are just too diverse. Medics want their CT analysis programs, voice recording (and recognition), biologists have their own brand of software, physicists want Maple/Mathematica and mathematicians will kill to get their Scilab. You could try to include everything, but judging from both reviews, JDS is anything but overfeatured.
All this said, for the needs of an insurance company or some such it might be okay; but I don't see how it's better than SuSE, Redhat or Mandrake.
PS: What's wrong with the YaST installation? I like the way it's a 3-click install for newbies, but can configure everything for experts!
Divide et impera!
Most windows machines came with a JVM. XP initially came with it, then didnt then didnt again. And most large manufactures who sell XP preinstalled have it on their images, the Sun JVM that is.
None of my Windows machines have come with Java preinstalled.
Java is far from dead.
Of course, Java isn't dead. Even client-side Java and Swing aren't "dead". But Java started out promising to revolutionize application delivery, and that dream is dead. Client-side Java is a niche product now. And Sun's claims that their Java desktop is what Linux has been waiting for are bogus.
And why shouldn't sun do this. Take the best of the OSS community and embrace and extend, that is what it is all about.
And you say that with a straight face? Embrace and extend is Microsoft's traditional strategy for creating proprietary platforms and monopolies.
Why shouldn't they call it the "Java Desktop"? Because it's mostly written in C and mostly written by people not working for Sun, that's all. Calling it the "Java Desktop" just isn't honest.
Of course, as far as Gnome is concerned, this doesn't matter much either way. But it tells you where Sun and Java stand.
And solaris, does it really need a desktop?
Like a lame horse, Solaris needs a bullet to put it out of its misery as far as I'm concerned. But traditionally, Sun workstations actually sat on desks and were used by people, so that's why Sun probably still has some nostalgia about the desktop.