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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."
Pardon my French, here's a reason Linux fucking sucks. I should know, I work with it all the time. From the article:
/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. Upon rebooting to go to the second part of the JDS installation, Grub will load itself and then it will give me the grub command line and it would NOT load JDS to continue with the second part of the installation. I had to reboot, go to my Mandrake 9.1 installation, mount the ReiserFS JDS hdd3 partition, create a custom LILO file and then chroot to hdd3 and use LILO as my boot manager instead of grub. I did check the /boot/grub files on JDS, everything was in order, it's just that Grub can't read that menu.lst file when it is not installed on MBR. Sun told me that this seemed like a very specific case, and it seems that it was, as I later installed JDS on my AthlonXP PC and chose the same boot manager and partition setup and indeed worked flawlessly this time.
I installed it on
Just give me OS X any day instead.
The price issue.
Any other Linux operating system out there would cost you around $699 or the fear of constantly living under a lawsuit penalty, sort of like file-swappers and RIAA.
Sun is SCO-compliant, which guarantees the quality of distribution, verified applications, no Chinese backdoors and no malicious code inserted by hacker to own your system, like that sleazy Debian distribution, where anyone can get root access.
Java Desktop System, Page 1
/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. Upon rebooting to go to the second part of the JDS installation, Grub will load itself and then it will give me the grub command line and it would NOT load JDS to continue with the second part of the installation. I had to reboot, go to my Mandrake 9.1 installation, mount the ReiserFS JDS hdd3 partition, create a custom LILO file and then chroot to hdd3 and use LILO as my boot manager instead of grub. I did check the /boot/grub files on JDS, everything was in order, it's just that Grub can't read that menu.lst file when it is not installed on MBR. Sun told me that this seemed like a very specific case, and it seems that it was, as I later installed JDS on my AthlonXP PC and chose the same boot manager and partition setup and indeed worked flawlessly this time.
Installation
The Build 12C comes in 6 CDs: 3 binary, 2 source and 1 documentation. The installation will be familiar to SuSE users, as it is based on Yast2 (JDS is based on SuSE Linux). Installation went fine, except for two problems:
1. I installed it on
2. After I managed to boot JDS with LILO and entered the second stage of the installation the evolution-1.4.5 and gnome-user-docs RPMs will stall on 95% forever. Changing a screen and running "top" would reveal that scrollkeeper-up was consuming 100% CPU time and it was the culprit of the stall. I had to twice manually kill scrollkeeper to get on with the rest of the installation (thankfully, both RPMs were installed successfully as I checked later). On my second installation on the AthlonXP the same two files were again stalled for a very long period of time (this time I chose to not disturb scrollkeeper), so this is a totally reproducible problem. It drags the installation time from about 45 minutes to over an hour+.
Overall I found the installation cumbersome. It is very involved (I had to go through 4-5 pref panels to configure monitor and gfx card to my liking), very time consuming (staged installations, going through unnecessary screens sometimes), it is ugly and, under some conditions as above, buggy. The best graphical installer on Linux today is Red Hat's Anaconda (with only a couple minor UI annoyances) and Sun/SuSE should learn a few things from it. Anaconda retains its power and advanced options (e.g. it has more options than Lycoris' or Lindows' installers) without alienating the new user. Yast2 on the other hand is not what I would call a "modern" installer. It is powerful, but it does not come without its share of extra carefulness the user should have as the UI is not well designed and some things are not obvious in their outcome. I hope the Ximian designers at Novell give it a complete redesign soon.
Overall, the default JDS installation takes about 2.5 GB without the dev tools (which are not installed by default).
The Good
After it manages to get installed, JDS will boot in full graphical mode and load Gnome. JDS comes with a mix of Gnome packages, some are 2.2.1, some are 2.2.2, others are even 2.4.0 (gnome-panel). The final version of JDS has a different Launch icon than the betas had, a different background image and the UI is a bit more polished.
I liked the Launch menu that Sun has put together. It is pretty functional and manageable. If you don't count the "Extras" menu which has been deprecated by Red Hat and others for being a bad usability decision, other than that, the menu is good: recent items, search for files, log out, applications, preferences on their own placeholder and Star Office 7/Mozilla 1.4/Evolution 1.4.5 are to be found in a 'quick launch' position above the Applications on the same menu.
The distro comes with most of the Gnome 2.2 applications, plus a few more: Totem
It that's what they can come up with, a lot more work is left to do. Wont make a dent in the windows market share in corp land...
Rocket science is easy. Neurosurgery, now *that's* difficult.
If you use linux because you don't like msft, then you might want to stay away from sunw as well.
Sunw's involvement with scox has has been absolutely disgraceful. Not only has sunw been funding scox's attack on OSS, but McNealy has taken every oppertunity to squeal his silly lies about sunw having the only legal version of linux. Often, McNealy parrots McBride (scox's ceo) word for word.
I used to like sunw, but not anymore. There are plenty of other versions of linux available.
too bad your ass got saaaaacked.
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You sound like someone who has never had a real job.
Why do I never have mod points when I need them most! What have the mods modding this thread been on today?
The parent's parent was modded as 100% funny? Would somebody like to explain why that was funny? Either I've had a sudden sense of humor bypass or that post was quite simply not funny. Informative - Yes, Funny - No.
The parent modded as 50% Insightful, 50% Funny? Hardly - I'd say the parent was pure flamebait. - That's quite a personal attack on a public figure (public as far as most slashdotters are concerned). - It might have been funny had it not have been so personal.
Posted AC, so that I can say, "Wow! She is actually quite a looker!", without landing myself in hot water with the wife! - I'll look forward to meta moderating this thread.
holy jesus, the attention to the UI on anything but Windows if fucking appaulling.