Sun To Upgrade Java Desktop System

An anonymous reader writes "The second version of Sun's Java Desktop System should be unveiled this week, according to this article. And as part of Sun's effort to entice programmers to its new software, the new JDS software will include the Java Studio and NetBeans developer tools." The JDS is their Linux desktop system.

Comments

Nothing to do with Java!

[osullish]

Sun's "Java" desktop has as much to do with Java as this "security" site has to do with security

Re:Nothing to do with Java!

[vijaya_chandra]

and as much as all the .NET applications had to do with the net

Re:Nothing to do with Java!

[Decaff]

Who says it has nothing to do with Java? It has an up-to-date pre-installed Java VM, Java tools for adding extensions to Star Office, it now includes Sun Studio for Java development. The JVM is linked with Mozilla, so user can run serious Applets (making Java Desktop ideal for corporate environments and intranets).

Its a corporate linux desktop which includes substantial Java tools to allow integration with, and development for, server-side J2EE installations.

Re:Nothing to do with Java!

[khuber]

Do you work for Sun or something?

Except for Sun Studio, I believe you can freely download the other items you mentioned. I don't know why you need a whole Linux distribution for it anyway.

It seems to me that the primary benefactor of the JDS is Sun. They want to collect site licensing fees. I'm not saying it's a bad idea, it's just not that amazing once you look past the marketing.

Re:Nothing to do with Java!

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for Sun Studio, I believe you can freely download the other items you mentioned.

You can freely download Linux too. Does that mean that Linux distros don't have much to do with Linux?

It seems to me that the primary benefactor of the JDS is Sun.

Well it is their product.

Re:Nothing to do with Java!

[Decaff]

Do you work for Sun or something?

I must do, mustn't I, as I disagree with the mainstream Slashdot view? Actually, no.

Except for Sun Studio, I believe you can freely download the other items you mentioned. I don't know why you need a whole Linux distribution for it anyway.

But that is the major complaint from so many Linux geeks.... Java is not pre-installed! You don't want to have to download and install systems on hundreds of corporate desktops.

As for a while Linux distribution... why not? Its free.

It seems to me that the primary benefactor of the JDS is Sun.

Wow! A company sells something and its designed to benefit them!

They want to collect site licensing fees.

Shame on them.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea, it's just not that amazing once you look past the marketing.

That is not the point being discussed. The point was that it was 'nothing to do with Java'.

Re:Nothing to do with Java!

[IANAAC]

Who says it has nothing to do with Java? It has an up-to-date pre-installed Java VM, Java tools for adding extensions to Star Office, it now includes Sun Studio for Java development. The JVM is linked with Mozilla, so user can run serious Applets (making Java Desktop ideal for corporate environments and intranets).

Uh... so does SUSE. Does that make it a "Java desktop" too? No, because they don't own the trademark, plain and simple.

Re:Nothing to do with Java!

[Anonymous Coward]

regardless I still maintain that java is evil and will steal your sould and sell it to the highest bidder.

Re:Nothing to do with Java!

[Cheetahfeathers]

He's right, though, and Johnathan Schwartz says as much. They use Java more for brand recognition, not as a reference to the language. Same thing with their Java Enterprise System suite of software. It has a minor java front end, but that's about it.

Re:Nothing to do with Java!

[eean]

It's an island and drink, not much of a trademark. Look at JavaScript (which was developed by Netscape corp. and indeed has nothing to do with Java Technology.)

They're aren't Sun, so Novell doesn't try and push Java every chance they get.

Re:Nothing to do with Java!

[njcoder]

Right, and they're J2EE app server that's part of JES doesn't have anything to do with java either, or their portal server.

Re:Nothing to do with Java!

[Decaff]

SuSE includes Sun Studio, and Java 1.4 pre-installed? Woo! Show me the URL.

Re:Nothing to do with Java!

[wideBlueSkies]

I hear that the upgrade is supposed to fix a bunch of problems like bloated data structures, and general slowness.

In other news MSFT is asking their developers to work on fixing security problems.

Sure they are....

wbs.

Re:Nothing to do with Java!

[dtfinch]

I've got all that, and I'm running Fedora Core 2. Except got OpenOffice, NetBeans, and Eclipse instead of StarOffice and Sun Studio. Just took a little while to download, install, and configure.

Re:Nothing to do with Java!

[IANAAC]

Everything but Sun Studio is installed. And linked properly. It was in 9.0 and is also in 9.1 - both purchased versions.

Re:Nothing to do with Java!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you can download all the other items and add them to whatever linux distro you are running does not take anything away from that fact that this suite, sold as one package INCLUDES all of these Java tools ... what was your point ?

Hey Mercedes you can't call that a car ! BMW also make one and they call it a car too !!!

Re:Nothing to do with Java!

[khuber]

My point was that Sun isn't doing anything new. Let's reflect on the success of Sun's strategies for a moment: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=SUNW&t=5y

Given Sun's x86 track record and their inexperience with Linux, I don't see any reason to get excited about this. If Sun wants Java ubiquity they ought to make it open source. If Sun wants to support Linux, they should partner with existing distributions like IBM does. This is just another example of Sun not understanding the market and scrambling to make a few bucks off of Linux in lieu of a real strategy.

I'd love for Sun to be successful as they have always had some well-engineered products I've liked, and I like Solaris, but I don't think JDS is leveraging Sun's engineering talent and using it develop products like they should.

Re:Nothing to do with Java!

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't have to be anything new, that wasn't the point of this thread. It does exactly what it says on the tin.

And Sun are partnering with exisiting distros, they scrapped their own release last year and now offer Suse and RedHat Enterprise Linux.
JDS is built on Suse distro.

Re:Nothing to do with Java!

[Decaff]

So, SuSE has Java security tools built in? network management built in? Java pre-integrated with Open Office?

Re:Nothing to do with Java!

[christophersaul]

Maybe you ought to find out a bit more about JDS before making your comments. You could also check out the share prices of some other companies that made a lot of money out of the .com boom and decide how well they're doing.

JDS is based on an existing Linux distro. Sun do partner with existing distros and support them on their existing x86 and Opteron servers. Sun clearly do understand the market well - why do you think they're creating these products in the first place. They're not aimed at Slashdotters trying out a new distro every week, they're interested in the business desktop.

NetBeans

[WilsonSD]

Here's a link to a good review of NetBeans (which is now included with JDS):

NetBeans 3.6 IDE is Much Improved

-Steve

Re:NetBeans

[FunkyELF]

"At any rate, it's hard to cavil when so much value comes at so low a price. NetBeans 3.6 is available as a free download or for $9.95 plus shipping for a packaged CD.

But we'll cavil anyway. Refactoring features, beloved by users of open-source competitor Eclipse, won't be matched until later this year in NetBeans 4.0"

Couldn't agree more. I can't speak for the performance of the new netbeans, but unless it is 5x faster than previous eclipse wins hands down. And also they admit that eclipse has them when it comes to refactoring. If you have never used eclipse before, try it once and you'll love it. Renaming a method or a class across a project is so easy.

At work it turned out that everything we were calling "a" in a project was supposed to be called "b" and everything we were calling "b" was supposed to be called "c". I couldn't imagine performing all those changes without a tool like eclipse. Because those names which we got messed up appeared in public variables, local variables, method names, class names and package names. Eclipse does an awesome job determining the scope of what you're trying to change. I went and used their preview tool to preview the changes before they were made and they did not make a single error.

Re:NetBeans

[SoTuA]

I tried 3.6.

NetBeans is the most painful experience ever. And 3.6 eats so much ram it isn't funny, while eclipse 3M8 worked great, and 3m9 speeds along nicely, with a better UI and better features.

Re:NetBeans

[FunkyELF]

the problem is that the people I work with still use Sun One or Netbeans or Forte or whatever its called (I honestly don't know the difference between any of these and I bet Sun would have a hard time explaining the differences themselves) because it integrates with Rational Clearcase for their CVS. But Clearcase integrates into windows, so I can do my checkins / checkouts from explorer. I would be nice to get it working with eclipse because then I could get these people to start using it. The problem is that to switch they would first only see it as a hastle because of cvs and not an improvement.

Re:NetBeans

[NullSynapse]

No hassle. Rational provides a plugin for eclipse.
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/lib rary/content/03July/2500/2834/ClearCase/clearcase_ plugins.html

Re:NetBeans

[Some Bitch]

eclipse 3M8 worked great, and 3m9 speeds along nicely, with a better UI and better features.

Now if I can just get the damn thing to build a J2ME Midlet suite properly...

Re:NetBeans

[SoTuA]

Now if I can just get the damn thing to build a J2ME Midlet suite properly...

I sure could have used a good jsp/servlet plugin for eclipse, lomboz just didn't cut it. Wound up doing it with JDeveloper, wich sucks for coding but has wizards to die for :D and deployment works every time, unlike netbeans.

Re:NetBeans

[sql*kitten]

Couldn't agree more. I can't speak for the performance of the new netbeans, but unless it is 5x faster than previous eclipse wins hands down.

Couldn't agree more. Sun's Java IDE all the way from Forte onwards has been unusable as far as I'm concerned. Ugly and counterintuitive interface, slow as hell, and it can't even roundtrip code properly - it has to embed peculiar comments so it can keep track. Oracle JDeveloper gets my vote. I did try eclipse but I could never get it to work reliably with VSS so I went back to JDeveloper and just used the regular VSS client.

Re:NetBeans

[DeadMeat (TM)]

I've had pretty good luck with EclipseME, though I don't remember if I've used it since I installed M8.

Before EclipseME, I used Antenna. It obviously doesn't integrate as nicely into Eclipse, but it still beats writing Makefiles by a longshot.

oooh, netbeans

[jbellis]

Java developers already know where to get Eclipse, the free IDE started by IBM but spun off into a community project. a survey by O'Reilly recently showed Eclipse to be used by over 60% of java developers (including me, so I guess I'm biased -- but I use emacs almost as much) while NetBeans is used by under 20%.

So it looks to me like Sun is trying to pull a Microsoft and hope people use the bundled product even if it's inferior. But like I said, Java developers already know where to get Eclipse.

Re:oooh, netbeans

[Anonymous Coward]

And those who does not, does now...

Re:oooh, netbeans

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll second that sentiment. Eclipse is the best all-around IDE + Platform. Ever since I started using 2.0, I haven't touched JBuiler or any other java IDE. Every now and then I'll use VI if I'm logged into a server, but overall Eclipse is my favorite.

Re:oooh, netbeans

[lokedhs]

If you are prepared to pay a little (not much) you really should try IDEA. It's the tool that Ecplipse tries to emulate. Eclipse does have many of the features IDEA has (not all though) but IDEA just does it much faster and with fewer keypresses.

Yes, Eclipse is much faster than NetBeans, but IDEA is faster.

Re:oooh, netbeans

[SoTuA]

IDEA is faster and prettier, has a shitload of features, but if you think US$500 us "a little (not much)", I envy you :)

Re:oooh, netbeans

[Anonymous Coward]

Might as well go for the whole ball of wax and buy IBM' WSAD. At least it will be supported longer than 18 months.

Re:oooh, netbeans

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? WSAD isn't must better than Eclipse, and it still has all the eclipse crapness.

Re:oooh, netbeans

[lokedhs]

Agreed. I've been doing professional software development for too long, so I never have to pay for my tools. I have to admit, that if I didn't have an IDEA license I would probably be an Eclipse user.

Eclipse isn't bad, and you certainly can't beat the price. But once you tried IDEA, it's hard to back to something else.

Re:oooh, netbeans

[Lucretius]

I actually tried switching back to Eclipse after using IDEA for a job. I just couldn't do it, I went out and forked over the money for IDEA, it was well worth every penny I spent on it.

Seriouslly, I think the only thing I've found that Eclipse is better at than IDEA is in its AspectJ integration.

Re:oooh, netbeans

[njcoder]

I used to mainly use text editors for many years rather than a pure ide solution. Recently I started looking into the free ide's available. I worked on a couple of projects with eclipse as well as netbeans.

Eclipse seemed faster in some cases but only in some minor things such as dialog boxes or new windows opening up. After using it for a while, there didn't seem to be that much of a difference between it and netbeans. Especially in terms of memory usage.

Eclipse seems to be a lot more stripped down than netbeans. Netbeans comes with a whole bunch of modules right out of the box to do gui development and web development. Whereas in eclipse you have to download third party modules. As you add more modules the size of the application starts to increase. Also, to get the quality of modules that come with netbeans you have to pay for them in eclipse. For building web apps I really like netbeans. Eclipse with things like myeclipse works pretty well. MyEclipse is pretty cheap but not cheaper than free.

Look at IBM's WebSphere Studio. Once it finishes loading it's taking up about 150 Megs of memory (not virtual).

Both are kind of lacking in certain features but that's part of the point in both of them. They want to be a platform to build tools on as well as an ide for third parties to build plugins and charge for them.

Netbeans has been around a lot longer and has some more built in functionality than Eclipse does. I like the way Eclipse is more ant-like but NetBeans has good ant integration and with 4.0 will have an ant based project system. I've played with the new project system and it's really nice.

I don't know what some people's hangups are with Swing. I've used a full blown IDE for developing web applications about 6 years ago, on typical hardware from 6 years ago and performance was fine. Right now, I'm runing with Tiger and swing performance is a lot better.

The thing I don't like about SWT is that you have to rely on the native widgets and some platforms may not have the same set of widgets and they usually don't look the same across platforms if they do. SWT seems like a good short term solution but with the performance enhancements coming out for Swing/AWT, SWT may be obsolete soon.

The bottom line for me was that I didn't have to spend time and money comparing different plugins I needed that would work the way netbeans does.

It's odd, while eclipse may be faster I am much more productive in netbeans. The keyboard shortcuts, code completion and interface just work better for me.

Refactoring can be a pain if you have to do it often. If it's a concern there is a module for netbeans called RefactorIT which blows the doors off of what eclipse provides for refactoring. It's pretty cheap too.

I wonder if people's opinions on netbeans is based on some tools built using netbeans and not netbeans itself. Sun' Studio 5 update 1 had some weird behavior. Every once in a while something seemed to go into an infinite loop and just pin the cpu utilization at 100% while seeming to do nothing. Wind up having to kill the process and restart the ide. Can be a big pain if you haven't saved your work. I hope they've fixed that because the few times that happened it really ticked me off. I've used NetBeans more and haven't seen that happen.

When doing GUI development though I have gotten a few NPE's in NetBeans when adding new components. I just make sure to save frequently and if that happens, closing the form editor and reopening it fixes the problem without restarting the IDE. I don't do much GUI development so I don't know if this is new to 3.6 and JDK 1.5 or not. I'm hoping that it's because 1.5 is still beta.

The task list in Eclipse is really cool and NetBeans has something similar now but I haven't really used it much. I also like the way Eclipse handles imports. You start typing in the cannonical class name and if it's not in your import list it will add

Re:oooh, netbeans

[HiThere]

If IDEA is the best extant Java IDE... well, you've confirmed my feelings about Java. (Which I feel is a language designed to require an IDE.)

OTOH, a while back I used IBM's (what did they call it now...the one they pushed before they started pushing Eclipse. (Was it VisualJ, or was that someone else?) It really seemed to work. I don't like Java, but that IDE made it useable. (Well, so did IDEA, but "usable" is how I feel about IDEA, and the IBM IDE I thought pretty good. Of course, they had roughed out the design on several other languages, including Smalltalk, earlier.)

Generally I prefer a language that doesn't demand more of an IDE then Glade + Kate (+ Mozilla or some other documentation reader). This means, e.g., that the libraries need to be sensible. Python comes close. D comes close (that's Digital Mars D, & I use OpenOffice.org in preference to Mozilla, even with the work involved in converting the documentation, because sometimes I need to searc the whole documentation, and grep tends to produce illegible garbage when it searches html files).

Re:oooh, netbeans

[lokedhs]

Before starting to use IDEA, I didn't think anything could drag me away from XEmacs, which by your standards ought to qualify as acceptible.

It was only after trying IDEA I realised that creating a development tool that goes beyond the simple editing of text and instead let it know about the code structures themselves. It is this that makes the "rename" symbol work. In normal editors, changing the name of a method can be next to impossible, of the name is a common one so that a search and replace doesn't work.

The ironic part is that VisualAge for Java (which is the name you were looking for) was the first Java development tool to actually have this "work with the code, not the text" capability. This has been refined in both Eclipse and IDEA, but IDEA simply does it better and faster.

Re:oooh, netbeans

[Anonymous Coward]

"Agreed. I've been doing professional software development for too long, so I never have to pay for my tools."

So how does that work? I've been doing professional SW development for over a dozen years, and (except for my work's computer, which is really for just used for company-related-stuff and pr0n, for IP reasons) I've had to pay for most non-GPL tools used for my own programming projects.

Re:oooh, netbeans

[lokedhs]

Are you saying that your employer don't play for your tools?

Re:oooh, netbeans

[HiThere]

That's right. VisualAge.
The only real problem I had with VisualAge for Java what that it was HUGE!! But I considered it a better tool than IDEA (which proves something about taste).

OTOH, I don't like XEmacs. I like having file dialogs, and KDE standard interfaces. The basic concept is fine, but I find the implementation difficult to use. (I don't like needing lots of odd keystroke combinations.) Perhaps it's that I learn slowly, but I want an interface that I can start using immediately, and which is reasonably comfortable. It's also nice if the interface is deep and customizeable...where the EMacs versions really shine, but this doesn't work unless it's reasonable to work into it slowly.

E.g., say that Kate were scriptable in Python (Lisp is soo old fashioned!). And say that there was a user menu (hierarchical, of course), and say that there were some good way to add scripts to the menu, and assign keystroke combinations to the execution of those menus... That would improve the current system that I'm using. But KDevelop and Anjuta DON'T improve the system. The Kate project file needs some development, but it's made a good start. One needs to be able to see what files are a part of the project, rather than merely automatically opening the last selection of files that were open when the project was saved. And one needs to be able to assign directories to be members of the project as well as individual files. (These steps both make it more like a standard IDE, of course, but it's merely a DE, not an IDE. Kate is the file handling and text processing element. Currently I use Glade as the graphics development element, but Kate doesn't, and shouldn't, care about that. And I tend to use Mozilla rather than Konqueror to read the documentation, but sometimes I use OpenOffice.org. And Kate doesn't need to know anything about this. And shouldn't care.

VisualAge for Java tried to do ALL of this, and ended up being HUGE, even though it did it all fairly well. Other applications try to be in control, and end up in insisting that I, e.g., read the documentation in the form that they expect...which can mean that I can't install an upgraded version of Mozilla, because they don't know about it. XEmacs, perhaps, and Emacs can do it all, but at the cost of a steep learning curve before you can start using it. I'm ONLY learning my DE on an ad hoc basis. My attention needs to be on the program I'm writing. If I must pay too much attention to the tool, then the tool has defeated its purpose.

(Also, I have thus far avoided carpal tunnel, and I would like to continue to avoid it, thank you. So, e.g., I use my mouse with my left hand...I started to feel strain when I was using it on the right, and a warning was sufficient. And that means that I avoid difficult key-combinations.)

Re:oooh, netbeans

[lokedhs]

I'm still not sure what you have against IDEA. It allows you do reconfigure pretty much everything. Writing a plugin I very easy if you really want configurability. It also allows you to specify which app to start when reading javadoc documentation, although the live popup of javadocs are usually more than enough. Oh, and you don't have to use the mouse.

You still didn't adress the fundamental problem with most development tools: They work with text, not code. How do you go about when you want to rename a single method? Or you want to pull a member from a subclass to a superclass and making the callers use a reference to the superclass instead? Or even simple things like extracting methods?

Re:oooh, netbeans

[Anonymous Coward]

Only for work-related programming; and only for software on the computer owned by work.

Any personal projects are done on my own computer with my own tools, for fear of those intellectual property clauses about employers owning stuff made on their equipment.

Re:oooh, netbeans

[HiThere]

But if they work with "code", then you've got to use the language that they understand. I tend to switch between languages. I switch from Python to Ruby, add a smidgeon of C (only a little, because I hate C casting), switch to D (Digital Mars D). Last year I would have thrown Eiffel into the mix, but not this year. Etc.

If I could tell the tool about the language that I was using (on an ad hoc basis...I wouldn't want to enter a whole bunch of things at once), then a code sensitive tool might make sense. As it is, even just getting it to highlight things properly is work. But Kate comes with most of the patterns for these languages built-in, and most of the rest downloadable. (That said, there was a period of time when Kate didn't recognize D, and I switched to NEdit, where I could define what was significant, until I was through with that part of the project. I'm not sure about the current state, but I'm presuming that they've added it to the list of updatable patterns.)

So...perhaps if Java is the only language you use, then IDEA will work for you. (It worked for me, but I thought it inferior to Visual Age for Java. Another single language editing system which is knowledgeable in a restricted area [i.e., Java].)

It includes netbeans?

[NitsujTPU]

What!? You mean I can get a free copy of the Netbeans IDE with Java Desktop? How can they afford to do that?

Netbeans

Re:It includes netbeans?

[Anonymous Coward]

How can they afford to do that?
It's simple.... VOLUME!!

Re:It includes netbeans?

[wed128]

i think the joke is that you can get netbeans for free, for any linux platform. look around suns website

The first time I booted the Java Desktop LiveCD...

[defile]

I opened a terminal:

$ javac
bash: javac: command not found

*sigh* Can Sun do anything right?

Get a clue, Sun

[Reality Master 101]

I will never even consider using it until they get the word "Java" out of the name.

Mostly because the product has nothing to do with Java, although, I have to admit I associate negative connotations to anything with Java in the name.

Re:Get a clue, Sun

[Timesprout]

The product has a lot to do with Java. Its SUN's attempt to push a Java enabled development environment out of the box. Many of us have positive attitudes towards Java so there is a certain logic to doing this. I admit I have not looked at Nettbeans for a while but I remember it being ok, if a little slow and probably better suited to newbies and Visual Studio crossovers than Eclipse.

As a side note if OS products were judged on their names alone no one would use the majority of them.

Re:Get a clue, Sun

[Anonymous Coward]

> ...get the word "Java" out of the name.

> ...associate negative connotations to
> anything with Java in the name.

So you choose your software based on (1) name and (2) prejudices? /me backs away slowly...

GPL?

[thegent]

Since Sun includes a Ton of GPL'd software on their CD, where are the sources? I can't find any download either on their site (tried "Java Desktop System" download site:sun.com and all I got was a lenghty FAQ) I'd like to try it, where do I get it from?

Re:GPL?

[kubrick]

They don't have to provide source to "just anyone", only to people who purchase the JDS from them. They can do this via secure download to these people, or by shipping source CDs with the distribution -- neither of these would enable you to download it. I don't know how they do do this, but I might be upset about it if I were an author of included software, or a customer without the GPL'd sources. I'm neither, so I don't really care.

Re:GPL?

[Anonymous Coward]

CDs containing sources are provided with the package.

Re:GPL?

[angusr]

Source CDs come with package, or are downloadable with the update (those who bought the first version can download the updated version ISOs free-of-charge).

You'll need to purchase it if you want to try it - see here - currently $50 for US users, but most people who'll be interested in it will have existing Sun suppliers who may have better deals, or evaluation arrangements.

It's nothing special as a distribution, IMHO - not bad, nothing standout - but it's main strength may lie in its integration with the Sun Control Station and centralised distribution and control, which I haven't had a chance to play with.

Re:GPL?

[nathanh]

Since Sun includes a Ton of GPL'd software on their CD, where are the sources?

On discs 4, 5 and 6.

You did get all 7 discs, right?

Paying for employees that don't use JDS?

[The Analog Kid]

Companies purchase JDS by paying US$100 per year for each employee in the company--regardless of how many actually use the software.

So lets say I have 100,000 employees in my company and only 10 use JDS, but yet I still have to shell out 10 million a year. I think Sun will be hard pressed to find companies that will actually buy into a licensing scheme like that. I mean, I thought Sun's goal is to make money not to loose it and this isn't going to make them any money.

Re:Paying for employees that don't use JDS?

[lokedhs]

I really shouldn't post this, since it encourages lazyness, but I'm constantly amazed at the imabiity of sladhdot readers to find information for themselevs. Here's a quote from Sun's FAQ for the Java Desktop System:

15. Q. How much does Java Desktop System sell for?

A. There are two available pricing options for Java Desktop System:

* $100 / desktop / year
* $50 / employee / year for customers who wish to purchase Java Desktop System for all employees of their company.
* A special promotion is also planned that reduces by 50% the first year price of either of the above two options. This promotion is in effect until June 2, 2004.

Re:Paying for employees that don't use JDS?

[Anonymous Coward]

whats your point? 50/employee is still way too expensive. Even $1/employee is.

Re:Paying for employees that don't use JDS?

[lokedhs]

Go back and read the message I was replying to. You really should have done that before replying.

Re:Paying for employees that don't use JDS?

[vijaya_chandra]

This is /. so you should definitely be amazed at our laziness

But the editor/submitter and zdnet too have a fair share in this confusion.

First of all the link for the text "Sun's Java Desktop System" in the post should have been pointed to
http://wwws.sun.com/software/javadesktopsystem /

not just www.sun.com ( everyone here'd definitely know what sun's website is )

supposing an average /. reader clicked on the link and has gone to the sun website, searching for 'jds', which seemed to be the buzzword, doesn't turn up with the link for this JDS in the first page.
You will have to search for 'java desktop system' ( which would again be too much to ask from an average /. reader) to find out the correct link

Then again you will have to find out the "General FAQs" link on the left, stare at the loong faqs page and search for '$' to get to the details about the pricing ( which would again be too much to ....)

-- regardless of how many actually use the software
All this trouble because of the actual author on zdnet's misinterpretation about the pricing. Atleast this guy should have gone through the FAQs properly before submitting the article on their site

But this world is supposed to be a strange place, so would it be

What about this new configuration manager!?

[vijaya_chandra]

It also will come with the first version of Sun's Configuration Manager, which lets an administrator control the privileges and settings of different groups of desktop users.

I am confused.
Were sshd, bash and vi missing in the previous version!?!?

Re:What about this new configuration manager!?

[digitalhermit]

If it's actually a Linux based SMC (Solaris Management Console) it would be a very good thing. Clients for SMC exist for Solaris and Windows, but nothing for Linux. Whatever else may be said about Sun's bizarre marketing strategies and corporate (mis)-directions, they do have some good tools for systems management. Though I'm now a die-hard Linux user, there are still many areas where Solaris (maybe just by virtue of being developed longer) outshines Linux. This is of course changing minute by minute...

Re:What about this new configuration manager!?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am confused.

Then you're in the right place. You should feel right at home here!

Re:What about this new configuration manager!?

[NitsujTPU]

Agreed. I am not fond of the Configuration Manager. Why do I need a graphical tool that I don't understand how to use, to replace the process of writing config files, that I do understand?

GNU/Linux/GNOME + Java?

[NotZed]

You mean their GNU/Linux/GNOME + Java system, right?

Re:GNU/Linux/GNOME + Java?

[Anonymous Coward]

GNOME is part of the GNU project.

JDS: Linux today, Solaris tomorrow.

[IGnatius T Foobar]

The JDS is their Linux desktop system.

Not for long.

Sun has hinted more than once that they'd like JDS to be based on Solaris x86. I would expect at some point that they'll either start pushing a Solaris-based JDS, or even worse, "seamlessly upgrade" Linux-based JDS to Solaris-based JDS and load up a Linux binary compatibility layer to run those "legacy" apps.

Linux is a nuisance to Sun. It's really a shame, because Sun has done (or acquired and re-released) some great things: NFS, Java, OpenOffice... but they're so stuck on Solaris that they just can't handle the fact that it's all about Linux now. IBM "gets it" -- they do AIX when customers ask for it, Linux when customers ask for that, but they're pushing for unified Linux everywhere. But anyone who's experienced IBM's distribution of the GNU toolset on AIX knows that Sun absolutely kicks IBM's butt in terms of integration of the tools into a legacy Unix OS.

Anyway, I'd wager that Sun is going to continue to be schizophrenic about Linux until the board wises up and cans McNealy.

Re:JDS: Linux today, Solaris tomorrow.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that the Linux kernel still falls over under heavy loads (think enterprise operations, moving terabytes of data in and out of databases each day), mostly because of Linux's virtual memory manager. Until someone rewrites that vm system to be more robust, more "intelligent", and in particular stop thrashing the system trying to maintain unneeded data in the page cache, I will take Solaris over Linux anyday for these types of applications. I can drag any Linux system down to unusable, while the same thing on a Solaris system just makes it slow.

So it's NOT "all about Linux now" and it won't be for some time.

Re:JDS: Linux today, Solaris tomorrow.

[njcoder]

JDS is mostly a software stack that runs on top of the OS that gives it certain functionality that enhances the user experience as well as the managebility of a network of JDS systems.

Sun has said they want to create a JDS version that runs on Solaris as well. Definatley for Solaris x86 and maybe Solaris/Sparc as well but I don't remember.

To be fair, they also have their Java Enterprise System which now only runs on Solaris. Again, it's a software stack. They plan on releasing it for other OS's including linux and windows.

So the claim that they are looking to ditch linux for solaris isn't fair. They want it to run on thier own OS as well. That they released it under linux first and then moving to solaris should be a good sign of their adoption of linux. They could have done the same thing with JES and done solaris (x86 and sparc) first and then linux but with JDS they went the other way. They will still do linux JDS even when solaris JDS comes out from what they've been saying.

Re:JDS: Linux today, Solaris tomorrow.

[oconnorcjo]

Linux is a nuisance to Sun. It's really a shame, because Sun has done (or acquired and re-released) some great things: NFS, Java, OpenOffice... but they're so stuck on Solaris that they just can't handle the fact that it's all about Linux now.

Linux is a hard pill to swallow for Sun. The margine of profit off of anything Linux is small in comparison to anything they sell with Solaris. Sun knows that Linux is the future but Sun also knows that means thier profit margins are gone as well. They are doing more with Linux because they have to but they are doing it "kicking and screaming".

Sun knows it has no choice but to join the community but it will take any opportunity to stab it in the back if Sun thinks it can find a way "back to the good old days" (like when they paid SCO and blabbered it to the press). It is not just McNealy. How do you explain to investors that your future is to be a cross between DELL and RedHat but without the large volume of sales that Dell gets?

Re:JDS: Linux today, Solaris tomorrow.

[DrXym]

The thing is... a properly configured Linux can be installed on pretty much whatever hardware you have lying around. Whereas Solaris x86 can't.

So that fact alone pisses on Sun's parade in rather a big way.

Who is going to upgrade from JDS 2 to 3 if half the upgrades won't even work properly because the supported kit is slashed? Are countries like China or large companies expected to restrict their hardware to items in Sun's draconian Hardware Compatibility List?

Besides which, who cares that it's running a Solaris kernel? This is a desktop system, not big iron. It would make more business sense to put a Solaris compatibility layer on top of Linux and benefit from the development momentum that it has and Solaris doesn't.

But I don't think Sun is thinking straight these days. Just like AOL before them, it just takes a big chunk of cash to be waved before their eyes and suddenly they're Microsoft's bitch. It would not surprise me if JDS started shipping with .NET libraries in some future incarnation.

Re:JDS: Linux today, Solaris tomorrow.

[Jahf]

Sun has been saying since day 1 that Java Desktop would eventually run on Solaris (x86 and SPARC). The Linux product isn't just "going away" when that happens. Sun has seen that a number of customers specifically want a Linux OS underneath and running Linux binaries isn't good enough.

Yep, I work there, yep I work on Java Desktop. Yep, in a strange way that makes this comment -less- valid in some peoples' eyes :)

You are right that Sun has been schizo with Linux ... but WRT Java Desktop it is considered key.

Re:JDS: Linux today, Solaris tomorrow.

[Halfbaked Plan]

The thing is... a properly configured Linux can be installed on pretty much whatever hardware you have lying around. Whereas Solaris x86 can't.

Are you saying you can cite instances of hardware you were unable to install Solaris x86 on, or are you just out there spreading FUD about matters you have no experience with?

I have a somewhat limited experience installing Solaris x86 but it's worked on each of the several machines I've installed it on.

I call bullshit on this one.

Re:JDS: Linux today, Solaris tomorrow.

[willCode4Beer.com]

You are basically right. This is a classic case of different parts of the same company fighting with each other. Sony mp3 players and living room CD copiers vs Sony the RIAA member.

The Java camp really want to embrace Linux. They know that the success of Linux on the server is what made J2EE as big as it is today.

The SPARC/Solaris side of the business doesn't want to let go of a dying business. When you can get 10 x86 boxes with Linux for less than one SPARC with Solaris, its obvious where the market is going. And with the publicity of the success of the Google super cluster, people are taking it seriously.

I expect that the next *contrarion* software we'll see happens when Linux gets just a wee bit bigger. Lets face it, when Linux overtakes Mac on the desktop (this year?) we'll soon see MS offering their Office product for Linux. The guys who work on office want to grow their distribution. They could care less about the OS, or they wouldn't offer it for the Mac. (is dot net pre-emptive thinking here?)

I expect we have some interesting times ahead of us. We'll see big companies moving their internal fights into the public area.

My opinion, its lots of free entertainment.....

Re:JDS: Linux today, Solaris tomorrow.

[elmegil]

pushing

Yah, making an offering for some people who want to use Solaris x86 (remember when Sun tried to kill it and the users screamed and yelled?) instead of Linux is "pushing". Right.

Maybe you should go take your prejudices elsewhere. Oh wait, this is slashdot, I forgot. Land of "if it ain't a Linux I approve of, it's shite."

Re:JDS: Linux today, Solaris tomorrow.

[pyrrhonist]

Are you saying you can cite instances of hardware you were unable to install Solaris x86 on

I can. Solaris x86 will not install on a Dell Inspiron 5000.

I call bullshit on this one.

You'd be wrong then.

Re:JDS: Linux today, Solaris tomorrow.

[DrXym]

I suggest you review Sun's own hardware compatibility list before crying foul.

Re:JDS: Linux today, Solaris tomorrow.

[njcoder]

"Linux is a nuisance to Sun"

I don't know if it's so much of a nuissance as something they didn't feel they needed to do anything with.

People kept asking what was Sun's linux strategy and they didn't really have one. Then again neither does my mom. Except for McNealy who has his way of going over the top with things the majority of references from Sun regarding Linux have been positive. This is going back years now. I remember reading an interview with Billy Joy (maybe from 99?) Praised linux for what it was doing. He still thought Solaris was better for some things and he didn't seem to have an interest in doing anything with Linux. This is old news to him and a lot of people at Sun. Bill Joy has already started from square one with unix operating systems including SunOS and BSD. From a creative standpoint it would be like taking a step back for him and starting with something he's already done. As many of you will know, there isn't much satisfaction in that and he was working on other things (JINI). Why would sun want to tinker with a new start up OS when it is busy improving it's own popular one? If something comes out now that is better than linux, will all the developers abandon linux and work on that?

Sun has a really good unix os already that was much more mature than linux when people were complaining about Sun not embracing linux. That's like complaining that Harley Davidson didn't embrace the new engine designs and stuck with a V-Twin. (Okay, they have a water cooled engine now on the vrod).

IBM has said the same things about linux as sun has when IBM compared linux to aix. Sun is a much smaller company than IBM and has to make different decisions.

The whole "what's sun's linux strategy" questions have bothered me. I mean we don't ask RedHat what their AIX or Solaris strategy is and shun them if they don't come up with anything.

Meanwhile, Sun has come out with their own linux distro (though short lived they did have Sun Linux) and they are working on JDS. They are porting or working on porting a lot of their stuff to linux.

I'm hoping to see a lot of good things now from Sun in the low end server space with Andy Bechtolsheim coming back to Sun. They'll be selling Solarix x86 and Linux distros with the new servers. Obviously they're going to push Solaris more but unless something major happens they'll still be selling linux. Andy Bechtolsheim was one of the founders of Sun. He was tired of waiting for computer time at school and built his own workstation. Bill Joy was working on BSD. Then McNealy the MBA and someone else (the money guy I forget his name) started Sun. Bill Joy and Andy Bechtolsheim are true geeks in the best sense of the word. Their the hardware and software guys that Wozniak was to Apple. We see Sun now as McNealy and it puts people off. But there's a lot more to the company.

I just think people should lay off sun (and sun should be a little more careful of what they say) because the infighting in the unix community just creates a rocky foundation for someone else to stake a stronger claim in the server space. It happened with windows nt.

Re:JDS: Linux today, Solaris tomorrow.

[Halfbaked Plan]

I want to comparion shop.

Where do I find the Linux hardware compatability list?

Don't give me a long list of FAQs, Usenet newsgroups, and IRC channels I should dig around in.

Re:JDS: Linux today, Solaris tomorrow.

[DrXym]

Why should I do your work for you? Just type a simple search into Google, such as "Linux hardware" or "Linux HCL" and you'll find the sites for yourself.

Re:JDS: Linux today, Solaris tomorrow.

[Halfbaked Plan]

Yeah, man, yeah.

Re:JDS: Linux today, Solaris tomorrow.

[HiThere]

Actually, Sun doesn't even seem to grasp the idea of a community. They seem to be doing everything legal to make themselves into a pariah, despite that they started out with immense positive capital (Java & OpenOffice.org could have been converted into considerable popular sentiment).

Personally, I'm beginning to hope that Sun drops dead quickly, despite the beneficial things that they did in the past.

E.g., I haven't noticed any comment about whether or not they have changed their licensing policy to announce that much of the system is GPL. Well, OK, it's an announcement of a forthcoming release. The absence of any notice doesn't mean that they haven't improved their licensing beyond the bare "It's legal, and you can't make us do any more, Nyah!" that the previous release appeared to take.

Certainly at least one developer isn't interested in depending on a company that doesn't even give recognition to the people that built the products that it depends on. (A parallel case could be made to when the Blackdown JVM was first released for Linux. Sun grabbed it without either recognition of the programmers, or as much as a thank you. [It wasn't GPL, so they didn't have to. So they didn't.])

I think I'll stay away from any dependence on that company, thank you anyway.

Re:JDS: Linux today, Solaris tomorrow.

[DrXym]

Too contrary to type two words and get the results that you demand me to manually type out instead? Red Hat, Suse, Mandrake provide their own lists are you'd discover on the first 20 results, as well as several independent lists, as well as lists dedicated to particular areas such as audio, firewire, modems etc.

In summary, if you had a point (and it's hard to see that you did) you've lost it.

Whatever other qualities Solaris might boast, support for as wide a range of hardware as Linux is most certainly not one of them.

Re:JDS: Linux today, Solaris tomorrow.

[Halfbaked Plan]

Then why didn't you say 'go to Red Hat, SuSE, or Mandrake's site and look up their formal HCL,' instead of the usual 'cast a few search terms into the noise stream of google.' You made your point, but you made it one message late in the exchange.

Acronyms

[Anonymous Coward]

Ease up on the acronyms, please. Java Desktop System is not too hard to type. Using the JDS acronym is ambiguous and confusing. To most people in the industry, JDS refers to JDS Uniphase

IS your ADD so bad that you can't say anything without first converting all names to initials and acronyms?

Re:Acronyms

[Anonymous Coward]

In what industry exactly? I have worked in the computer software and hardware industry for 10 or so years and never heard about it.

Get down to earth and stop being a smart-ass.

Plans to update?

[cravey]

First we get 'xxx product released'. Then we get 'xxx product beta released'. Now we're getting 'xxx company plans to release'??

Can I just be the first to say DUH.

Re:Plans to update?

[Mudcathi]

First we get 'xxx product released'. Then we get 'xxx product beta released'. Now we're getting 'xxx company plans to release'??

So? Everyone knows that you haven't really made it big time until you're the xxx in "xxx company has been sued by SCO"

The one still based on SuSE 8.x?

[CdBee]

I recall a review on Linux.com a few weeks ago, of this software.

Apparently the underlying core of JDS hasn't changed since the original release, its just an interface and client software refresh. This meant it wouldn't install on many modern machines due to an outdated - by Linux standards - kernel 2.4.19

Re:The one still based on SuSE 8.x?

[BenjyD]

If that review is at all correct, why would anyone buy JDS? For $100/year/seat, I would want tech support I can rely on to help *now*. Otherwise, what's the point? I can get an answer to most problems online with a one-business day turnaround on most Linux forums (Gentoo, for example) for free.

If Sun want to charge extra money, shouldn't they have to provide something of value? Or do too many companies follow the idea "it's more expensive, therefore it must be better, or they wouldn't charge so much"?

Re:The one still based on SuSE 8.x?

[kaiwai]

No, its actually based on UnitedLinux which includes a number of neat features, for one, it uses the NGPL pthreads library instead of the old crusty method.

What you get with JDS is this; a company who knows their stuff with software that will be consistantly maintained, and better yet, they controll it. The problem with other vendors, they're at the mercy of Red Hat or Novell. Sorry, SUN doesn't want to be in that position, the same position that IBM find themselves in when dealing with Microsoft.

Re:The one still based on SuSE 8.x?

[ValourX]

Yeah, except you get better support from the companies you mentioned. Sun's support (at least the standard offering) is outsourced to India.

Who cares if it's Sun or RedHat or the community providing updates? The only track record for updates that I know of from Sun is with Solaris, and they only release updates quarterly (or monthly if you use Software Express).

JDS is a good *idea* but the way they implemented it is stupid. The kernel is so old that you can't run a lot of the hardware that is being sold today (or even last year, or even three or four years ago!).

-Jem

Re:The one still based on SuSE 8.x?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then perhaps you need to have more experience?

Sun releases patches on an almost daily basis. You can always go to sunsolve.sun.com and get the most recent security and performance updates (some are available only to contract customers, but all critical security patches are free). They bundle these together every two weeks into a bundle that you can download. Sun releases a quarterly compilation (maintenance update and/or hardware version) that they actually integrate into the ISOs and burn to real media, so you don't have to install a bunch of patches.

Why?

[Espectr0]

Why use JDS when there are better, cost-free alternatives?

Re:Why?

[mccoma]

Same reason companies buy Windows. Companies need a Vendor. Vendors are more trustworthy than some guy / gal in the I.T. department :)

Re:Why?

[Mateito]

> Vendors are more trustworthy than some guy / gal
> in the I.T. department :)

I dunno... been getting a fist full of headaches from the local EMC support recently. I'm currently trying to script the creacion of multiple snapshots, and the command line experience of the local guys is zilch, so every request goes to second level support in the US. We are talking 10 day turnaround here.

Ever tried writing a script with a ten day turnaround for every enquiry?

Blah

(Yeah.. I'm just bitter)

Re:Why?

[mccoma]

Ever tried writing a script with a ten day turnaround for every enquiry?

Thus the :) [but you knew that]. It is always interesting how little emphasis is placed on the after the purchase part of a huge I.T. purchase. The theory is always that the vendor will have people in contact with your I.T. staff that know every detail of their product (they built it, right?). This is, of course, a large lie (heck, I do remember one vendor's local rep who called me about his product - errrrrr). To be fair, I have ran into vendors who knew their stuff and gave a great value.

Open Source does breed a bit of self-sufficiency (part of the culture) and to truly execute a good Open Source I.T. strategy, you need to hire people with a professional, "I can do it" attitude (this does mean a little more cash and a little more work hiring then using the "checklist" approach). I guess at this point you probably would like to roll a better solution. I.T. Managers probably think this would be a more brittle, costly, and less well supported idea. It sometimes is (that old N.I.H. syndrome can creep in), but quite a lot of the time it isn't.

My guess, the biggest part of the problem was probably the influx of people who shouldn't have been in I.T. during the .com fun. I do believe the rest of us will need time to recover from all the damage to our reputations.

Best of luck on the script.

Ah! I've figured it out.

[iamdrscience]

I, like many people, made fun of Sun at first for calling it the Java Desktop when the majority of the code (and pretty much all of the core code) is written in C or C++. I've realized now though, that the case is the same with Java itself, so really the name fits perfectly.

Re:Ah! I've figured it out.

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't make any sense. If you look at a typical java-based application server, everything is Java.

Either you are stupid or you are just a troll. I'm guessing it's the latter.

Re:Ah! I've figured it out.

[owlstead]

Yes, well, you have to interface with the system, right? What Java is trying to do is to make it easier to develop (cross-platform) applications. Don't worry about buffer overruns, recompilation on different platforms (thanks, Ant team) etc. This all in a language that is easy to understand (clean syntax, no operator overloading etc).

If you see it from that perspective than you might understand what Sun is trying to do here. It's not about _writing_ the software in Java as much as making it an ideal platform to develop and launch Java applications. Note that it is called Java DESKTOP and not so much Java Operating System (which would be nice also, but try to get _that_ introduced into the world).

Note that the first edition not quite get there, according to the /. reaction. Hopefully the future hold nicer things.

Running JDS now...

[arudloff]

It's not too bad, basically SuSE as you've read before. My wheel mouse didn't work out of the box, and sound stuff didn't start automatically -- both of which would be really annoying to the common user.

The interface is gorgeous though, and sun studio isn't a bad alternative to eclipse. Why they include netbeans and studio is beyond me though, they're the same thing as far as I can tell. And I can't type "javac" directly from my home directory, which I'd imagine the average user would need to be able to do without changing anything

I'd like to see more of a sun supported community for JDS. I can't even find user forums or anything of the like to discuss the pitfalls I've found, etc. Hard to build a desktop user base if they are only going to marginally own up to it existing in the first place. I feel like I'm the only person in the world using it. Maybe it's just too early...

+1, Insightful !

[Gothmolly]

Thank you for not screaming that Sun must PROVIDE the sources with JDS. As everyone (should) know, the GPL only mandates that you provide a means for the end-user to acquire the sources.

Re:The first time I booted the Java Desktop LiveCD

[jarich]

Agreed. No one (even Sun apparently) bundles the Sun JDK.

Sigh....

If you already own the first version...

[stull13]

... the upgrade is free, but you do not receive the developer tools or the administration tools. In fact, I have yet to see a huge difference between the first version and the second version, since I downloaded and installed the ISOs last week. The kernel is still 2.4.19, but given the target audience of corporate users, it makes sense (I suppose) that they do not provide the latest version. Overall it is a decent system for non-hobbyists. Personally, I use it to test Java desktop software that I wrote in OS X.

GNOME and GPL s/w

[anandpur]

will thay give credit to GNOME and GPL s/w on which it is based. lot of details on GrokLaw

Re:The first time I booted the Java Desktop LiveCD

[agwis]

maybe you should have tried:

$ jikes

IBM seems to be getting a lot of things right with java lately :)

-Pat

Impressive

[Waffle Iron]

Wow, maybe I've got to take a look at Java again. Lots of people have posted comments saying that the JRE 1.4 is faster and more efficient than you'd think.

But it looks like with this new Java Desktop System, the proof is here. If Sun was able to port the entire Linux OS to run on the JRE, and Gnome too apparently... well, I'm impressed.

The only thing I wonder is why they went ahead and reimplemented yet another clone of Unix. It seems that with their pioneering Java software technology under the hood (after all, this is the language that introduced features like dynamic class loading, garbage collection and introspection to the world of computing) they could have pioneered a new modern, modular desktop OS.

Re:Impressive

[mtnharo]

Ummm, Java Desktop is not written in Java. JDS is a Linux distro from Sun that was put together as an option for companies who want a Linux/x86 partner for their Solaris boxen. It's a fairly basic distro which uses a customized version of GNOME, and has some of Sun's Java development tools packaged in.

Java may be getting faster, but unless you figure out a way to write a JRE that could be run without an operating system behind it, it can't be used as the basis for an operating system. (Note: I think there was a project to essentially create a sort of Java-enabled OS rather than a virtual one, which could natively run compiled Java code without a VM. I haven't heard anything about it since)

Re:Impressive

[Anonymous Coward]

You meant to be moderated as 'Funny', didn't you?

Re:Impressive

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello? "Java" in the name is for marketing purposes only.

Re:Impressive

[Anonymous Coward]

have the moderators gone completely mod ? this is just funny in a sarcastic way, and definitely not "insightful"

Re:Impressive

[Waffle Iron]

You meant to be moderated as 'Funny', didn't you?

Unfortunately, no. You see, as a child, my village was so impoverished that the only reading materials our school had available to to teach us was some discarded Sun marketing literature. The message attempts to describe reality as I understand it.

Re:Impressive

[*SECADM]

Perhaps you are talking about JOS. It was quite a happening project couple years back , and now seems to have splitted into couple of different projects.

-

Re:Impressive

[mikael]

(Note: I think there was a project to essentially create a sort of Java-enabled OS rather than a virtual one, which could natively run compiled Java code without a VM. I haven't heard anything about it since)

One of the ideas behind Java was that a object-orientated CPU (manipulating objects rather than ordinary registers) would actually be faster than the equivalent CISC or RISC instructions. This was going to be the PicoJava I core. But a Google search picks up nothing in the last four years.

Re:Impressive

[Anonymous Coward]

ASAIK all new Sparcs have had this for ohhh... about 4 years.

Re:Impressive

[Mr. Piddle]

Really? Where in SPARC v9 + VIS is PicoJava?

Breathtaking innovation

[bratgrrl]

Sun is trying to be even loonier than Darl. They're succeeding, but they're not nearly as amusing. Let's see, they 'have no Linux strategy', Red Hat is ''proprietary', and this warmed-over elderly "Java Desktop" would more accurately be named "Old Moldy SuSE." The innovation is breathtaking.

Re:The first time I booted the Java Desktop LiveCD

[Anonymous Coward]

If the livecd is intended to be a demo to sysadmin or endusers types, then it seems unlikely the target audience would need (or want) to compile Java source.

Although this does make cringe a little bit...

Best quote

[bratgrrl]

"Companies purchase JDS by paying US$100 per year for each employee in the company--regardless of how many actually use the software."

Um, OK! I'll sign up today!

Argh, wrong link

[lokedhs]

And posting the correct link woul have been better.

JDS on Solaris

[ChrisRijk]

JDS release 3 will be supported on Solaris - I think it'll be the default UI on Solaris 10 (shipping in Q4 this year). This is for both Solaris SPARC and x86.

This was the plan all along, so it makes sense that they didn't put "Linux" in the normal title, but maybe they should have called what's shipping now "JDS for Linux" or something.

Jbuilder for me!

[autopr0n]

I tired eclipse, but honestly the auto-complete simply didn't work the way I'm used to. Eclipse has great features, but the wonky autocomplete made it a pain to type out code :P.

Never looked at netbeans, though.

Also, sun despises eclipse because it's based (IIRC) on WX windows, rather then Swing. So GUI code produced isn't '100% pure java'. Is that correct, or can you design swing aps with eclipse?

Re:Jbuilder for me!

[znaps]

Yes, you can design Swing apps with Eclipse (I do).

The issue Sun has is that the Eclipse UI is written using a competing GUI API, 'SWT' which is closer to AWT than Swing.

Here's their build script:

[k4rm4_p0l7c3]

for file in `find / -name '*.c'`;
do sed s:Linux:"Sun Java Desktop":g $file > /tmp/$$;
mv /tmp/$$ $file;
done;

Re:Here's their build script:

[Anonymous Coward]

Using sed -i would be easier, unless it's GNU-specific and not supported in their version.

Great, BUT!

[kaiwai]

What is holding JDS back isn't necessarily Linux but the fact that SUN has done nothing about dire shortage of third party software vendors for the desktop.

There are a HUGE number of companies out there who would jump ship in a minute for a JDS solution IF they could get their "mission critical" applications on JDS. I'm sorry, but if SUN want the customers, the customers require the software, no software, no customers, its just that simple.

Want to solve the problem? go to the vendors and ask, "how much to port this application natively to JDS", find out the price, and the cut the software vendor a cheque! Once you get a handful of vendors producing, more vendors will come on board volunteerily because they don't want to feel like they've missed out on the "next big thing".

Its about creating momentum, but unfortunately SUN just doesn't get it, and never has, and never will.

Re:Great, BUT!

[Decaff]

What is holding JDS back isn't necessarily Linux but the fact that SUN has done nothing about dire shortage of third party software vendors for the desktop.

Eh? its Linux and there is an up-to-date Java VM included. It runs KDE and Gnome apps. What shortage of third party software is there?

Re:Great, BUT!

[kaiwai]

Eh? its Linux and there is an up-to-date Java VM included. It runs KDE and Gnome apps. What shortage of third party software is there?

Oh, so now I can purchase MYOB? Adobe software? Macromedia Software? Peach Tree Accounting?

Wake up sunshine. There are no viable third party solutions that can be drop in replacements for what business need. Businesses, want a real solution, they want it NOW and they want it from the same vendor.

Sorry, K-Whatver or G-Whatever will not cut it.

Sorry to sound a little harsh but lets cut the crap, People want the applications they're used to and PHB's don't want to spend even MORE money trying to retrain their desk jockeys to use something different. You either step foward and say, "hey, you can run the same software packages on JDS" or else sit on the side lines wondering cluelessly why people run Windows in their organisations.

Again, no software, no customers. Its just that simple.

Re:Great, BUT!

[Decaff]

Wake up sunshine.

<Jar-Jar>How Wude</Jar-Jar>

There are no viable third party solutions that can be drop in replacements for what business need. Businesses, want a real solution, they want it NOW and they want it from the same vendor.

That's not what the majority of corporate desktops are for. Been there, seen them, supported them, know what I'm talking about. Its web browsing, e-mail client, word processing, spreadsheets, and a front-end to corporate applications such as SAP.

As for same vendor - nonsense - most corporations are mixed vendor environments, and most corporate app servers are not Microsoft.

Re:Great, BUT!

[Anonymous Coward]

Please... it's spelled "Sun"

IBM is IBM because it's an acronym.

MAC is really Mac, unless you're talking about MAC addresses in networking.

Re:Great, BUT!

[Anonymous Coward]

The dire lack of third party software is due to Linux and the fragmentation NOT Sun. Linux lacks 3rd party business apps big time. Just because Sun now has a Linux distro don't mean a damn thing.

Re:Great, BUT!

[Mr. Piddle]

Oh, so now I can purchase MYOB? Adobe software? Macromedia Software? Peach Tree Accounting?

For this stuff, go buy a Mac and get over it.

As far as corporations whose main applications are written in-house, JDS could be a perfect deployment platform for client-side operations. If you hired a secretary to keep the office running smoothly, does he/she really need more than JDS already has (StarOffice, Mozilla, etc.)? How about a tech-support person, who probably uses a web-based interface anyway? How about an engineer whose tools work under UNIX/Linux anyway? How about a system administration console for a server room?

For well under a thousand dollars per seat (including adequate PC hardware plus years of Sun support), you get a job done. It also allows saving the time wasted by chasing/testing/deploying the ceaseless patches from Microsoft that are always a case of russian roulette (round and round she goes, will she boot, nobody knows).

Re:Great, BUT!

[Anonymous Coward]

Stanford University Networks - SUN.

why do people hate sun so much..?

[this takes too long]

i dont know why so many people talk down on sun. imo they are the only company that could be able to come up with a good competitor to the windows os. im talking about the regular user here. a regular user hasnt got the time or interest to do all the tinkering neccesary to make linux work properly. linux sucks when it comes to hardware compatability for regular users. Sun has a brand name, they are instantly recognised by the public, they have muscle and are respected by hardware manufacturers. its only and only such a company that can breath life into a new OS for the private consumer market.

Re:why do people hate sun so much..?

[Decaff]

i dont know why so many people talk down on sun.

1. Because they are neither open source or Microsoft.
2. Because they haven't totally given up all proprietary UNIX, abandoned decades of experience in OS and kernel design, and immediately adopted Linux for everything.
3. Because they haven't sacked McNeally and appointed ESR as lifetime president.
4. Because they aren't allowing everyone to fiddle with Java (it's not like Java has been a raving success, after all: How can it possibly be called 'successful' until its a Debian package?)
5. Because you can't overclock their processors and post pictures of neat cooling systems to Slashdot.

Re:why do people hate sun so much..?

[Anonymous Coward]

i dont know why so many people talk down on sun.

Well, for starters, the network is not the computer.

The computer is actually that box-shaped thing the network plugs into.

Why eclipse?

[Decaff]

I'm puzzled by the huge uptake of eclipse. As a basic IDE its truly awesome, but it has no features to handle user interfaces, be they client-side or web. Netbeans may lack a lot of eclipse features (for now), but it has a very powerful Swing GUI designer and lots of vital J2EE features such as servlet and JSP debugging pre-installed. As far as I know you can only get those features for eclipse with commercial or shareware plug-ins.

Eclipse is a great free GUI for software that doesn't either have a user interface or run on a server.

Re:Why eclipse?

[jmb-d]

Eclipse is a great free GUI for software that doesn't either have a user interface or run on a server.

You have (partially) answered your own question.

Not everyone who programs in Java is creating UI components.

I've been developing in Java exclusively since 1997, and have created more non-GUI code than GUI code -- server-side, middleware, etc. -- I've been fortunate enough to have people who actually like (and are good at) doing GUI code around to handle those things for me.

Re:Why eclipse?

[Decaff]

I think you are missing my point, or maybe I'm misunderstanding you - I'm not talking about GUI components, I'm talking about the entire J2EE side (this is what I mean by server-side). As far as I can tell, almost all Java development is J2EE, and eclipse (unlike netbeans) has no built-in and free tools for J2EE deployment and debugging. Sure, there are some great tools, but they aren't part of the basic open source system.

I'd be really interested to know what developers like you use eclipse for.

Here is something you might find helpful

[dwalsh]

A brief discussion of sarcasm.

Once you get up to speed, you'll be able to spot it in no time!

No kidding...

[FunkyELF]

At work I have a Sun Blade 100. It runs Solaris. I develop a Java Swing application. I have an upgraded video card on my Sun box.

Guess how slow the program (written in Sun's language, interpreted by Sun's VM, running on Sun's OS, running on Sun's Hardware, accelerated by a high end graphics card) runs.

I'll tell ya...its SLOW. Moving a column in a JTable almost freezes the stupid thing. Works fine on my windows PC which is a lot slower by comparison.

Re:No kidding...

[BenjyD]

You have an x86 box that's slower than a Blade 100? Just how old is it?

Re:No kidding...

[Kohath]

SunBlade 100s are very slow by modern (last 3 years) computer standards. It's not Java's fault your hardware is so far out of date.

You can get a complete Linux PC for $300 that's 6-8 times the speed of that SunBlade (or faster).

No worse than "Javascript"

[Anonymous Coward]

Dumbest name for a language. To this day you still have to explain to PHB's that it has nothing to do with Java.

I still hear people say "its a java web page!". Sad, pathetic, and funny at the same time.

Lord have mercy on the clueless

[kaiwai]

The sources have been submitted back to their authors. Want to moan, moan to the projects who have no incorporated the changes. The changes SUN has done for GNOME are already back in the CVS tree, take a look, its right there for the world to see. SUN ALWAYS sticks rigidly to the rules.

Re:Lord have mercy on the clueless

[Anonymous Coward]

How is that modded insightful? The GPL says nothing whatsoever about submitting changes back to the authors, and doing so definitely does not exempt you from the GPL's requirements to make source available to anyone you make binaries available to.

As far as I know SUN are complying with the requirements and I'm in no position to suggest otherwise, however the above post was utterly wrong in its portrayal of the GPL's requirements.

$100 per employee per year

[Animats]

Companies purchase JDS by paying US$100 per year for each employee in the company--regardless of how many actually use the software.

Those terms make Microsoft look good. Does it self-destruct if you don't send in more money each year?

Go with OpenOffice. Less hassle.

Re:$100 per employee per year

[pedantic bore]

This seems too ridiculous to be true. Note that "Sun declined to comment for this story." The best the reporter could do was "sources familiar with the product." It was also conveniently posted on Memorial Day (in the US) with means that it's unlikely that there will be any official comment from Sun today, leaving this to simmer for a whole day. If Sun says something different tomorrow, it'll look like they're backpedaling. Coincidence, or a FUD tactic?

Re:$100 per employee per year

[owlstead]

Have you read the other comments? No? Then go away, or look it up at sun.com.

Re:$100 per employee per year

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, that is not too bad. If the old register article I found still holds true, you can combine it with the server licensing, and get a server+client license for a total of $150/year per employee. Assuming (yes, I know) that this includes support, and comparing with initial and recurring license costs from MS, it seems competitive.

Re:$100 per employee per year

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I boot OpenOffice? Oh, no, I have to download an OS first. Oh, and then I have to install/setup my browser, my multimedia apps, pdf viewing apps, java run time, etc.

Most people commenting here only think of themselves using this product and not in a business environment which is way off course.

So, $100 per year per employee compared to what in the corporate world?

MS Office is at least $275/per user in quantity. And, add to that the OS, and we have ourselves a deal at twice the price.

2 hands

[beforewisdom]

There was recently an article on slashdot about how awful this desktop was.

No surprise, SUN is not a front end company.

However, SUN's hook was a suite of remote admin software to make administering a network of linux boxes/desktops easy.

Be warned, MS made a place for itself despite technically inferior software by making things easier, especially for IT departments.

The OSS community could kill the SUN desktop before it gets to that point by making GPL remote network admin software.

Its all SUN has to show for its desktop at this point.

If the OSS community fails to do this, do it well, and do it in a timely way they may get their wish of linux desktops in the mainstream......but it will be the SUN desktop.

Steve

Re:2 hands

[Decaff]

There was recently an article on slashdot about how awful this desktop was.

Yeah.... what a surprise.

No surprise, SUN is not a front end company.

They pioneered the Unix Workstation, and innovative GUI systems like NeWS and the OpenWindows Window Manager. They helped port Gnome to Solaris. You must have some strange definition of 'not a front end company' that does not match our Earth usage.

The OSS community could kill the SUN desktop before it gets to that point by making GPL remote network admin software.

I thought OSS was about choice, not killing competition.

If the OSS community fails to do this, do it well, and do it in a timely way they may get their wish of linux desktops in the mainstream......but it will be the SUN desktop.

So the sun desktop is inferior, and awful and unusable....
but if we don't watch out it will take over the mainstream?

Make your mind up!

Re:2 hands

[Anonymous Coward]

[i]So the sun desktop is inferior, and awful and unusable....
but if we don't watch out it will take over the mainstream?

Make your mind up![/i]

Look at internet explorer. Versions 3 and earlier were inferior, awful, and unusable. By version 5, it had >90% of the browser market.

PREDICTION

[linuxislandsucks]

Sun will drop its lInux versions fo JDs fro in favor of Solaris versions of JDS..

Reason: the underlying Linux distro SUn is using is not SuSe as the article states but UnitedLinux which as you know modified SuSE amoung soem standards to make the distro..

As you know The SCO group has refused to modfiy it smembership in United Linux in order for further versions of United Linux to be produced..ie SUn choose a dead distro in order possibly lock cusotmers into Solaris..

Exepcted announcement aroudn JavaOne or a little bit after..

Re:PREDICTION

[acoopersmith]

Actually the underlying distro is SuSE Linux Desktop 1.0, as noted in Sun's Java Desktop System FAQ.

OS X and windows...

[simpl3x]

Microsoft certainly benefited from the availability of solid development tools, and now from a development budget which allows it to push the platform. This is a good move on Sun's part, but another necessary move is to get packaged installers available for all platforms, including OS X, which has a solid Java platform in place.

Clearcase with eclipse

[fizbin]

Better than the rational plugin described in another reply, check out the open source Clearcase plugin on sourceforge: http://eclipse-ccase.sourceforge.net/.

We've been very happy with eclipse in my development group, and all our code is in clearcase. With this plugin, we can do all our clearcase work quickly and easily from inside eclipse.

Re:Clearcase with eclipse

[FunkyELF]

Okay, thanks I'll check it out tomorrow. The link posted in the other one didn't work anyway. Plus I think i know what it was pointing to and it that plugin didn't work with 3.0

Sun Java Desktop System

[Anonymous Coward]

Ive been running SJDS R2 for over a week now. I upgraded from R1 (3 Iso download). Not surprisingly since being a Suse based system, the upgrade didnt work -- lots of links from the launch menu were broken and had to be fixed manually.
However, this system is the first Linux distro so far to install on the first try on my lowly box (2.6 P4, 512 MB, Gforce 4200 Ti) with EVERYTHING supported. The GUI is very Windows-like (for better or worse). IMHO this is the first distro that is ready for Joe Windows.

Cheers

CR

3D?

[zenstalinist]

But does the desktop act like that 3d one Sun demonstrated? THAT would be cool, and so cool if packaged well and demonstrated to game development companies, it could buy Sun a potential foot in the domestic use door.

Re:The first time I booted the Java Desktop LiveCD

[Anonymous Coward]

$ jikes
-bash: jikes: command not found
$ javac
Usage: javac
where possible options include:
-g Generate all debugging info
-g:none Generate no debugging info
-g:{lines,vars,source} Generate only some debugging info
-nowarn Generate no warnings
-verbose Output messages about what the compiler is doing
-deprecation Output source locations where deprecated APIs are used
-classpath Specify where to find user class files
-sourcepath Specify where to find input source files
-bootclasspath Override location of bootstrap class files
-extdirs Override location of installed extensions
-d Specify where to place generated class files
-encoding Specify character encoding used by source files
-source Provide source compatibility with specified release
-target Generate class files for specific VM version
-help Print a synopsis of standard options

Other way around?

Re:If they want a real upgrade

[dmitrygr]

u mean "Downgrade", dont you?

Sun hopes...

[dekeji]

And Sun still hopes its Java software will be the programming foundation of choice, spanning Windows, Linux and Solaris.

Yeah, and I suppose Amiga still hopes to recapture the PC market some day. Sun lost their opportunity to make Java a big player when they failed to open up the platform and hand over control to a standards body.

Today, Java is a server-side product now and also hangs on in a few other niche markets. And even on the server, Java is a specialty product, with most people using tools like PHP or ASP.

Re:Sun hopes...

[Anonymous Coward]

The big sites are using Java.

Use of PHP or ASP is limited to sites where some consultant is paid and doesn't give a crap about maintainability.

Re:Sun hopes...

[dekeji]

The big sites are using Java.

Yes, they are. That's what constitutes a "niche market".

Use of PHP or ASP is limited to sites where some consultant is paid and doesn't give a crap about maintainability.

Quite right: they just get the job done cheaply right now and rewrite in a couple of years. That's because they know that technology and tastes are changing too fast anyway to invest a lot into a long-term project.

But PHP and ASP can be used for developing long-term maintainable code (and some big sites use it), while it is just as easy in Java as it is in PHP to generate an unmaintainable mess.

Re:The first time I booted the Java Desktop LiveCD

[Anonymous Coward]

Mac OS X has javac installed by default.

poor statistic

[FaerieBoy]

seriously, that's just oreilly's onjava readers, not java developers.

i've never heard of anyone using eclipse in a work environment (or even heard of eclipse at all)....and i've worked with around 50 java developers front/mid/back and had my share of geek-talk-lunches.

PERDICTION

[Anonymous Coward]

ubjs!

Ya, java, uh-hu,

[Sfing_ter]

Well, having purchased ver. 1 (and since downloaded the second version, but not installed said download), Version 1 was essentially SuSE 8.2 with Gnome desktop, it was clunky and did not like my old laptop AMD K62-350 laptop, and purple theme. It was ok, but, it was SuSE 8.2, having already been using OO, Star-Office is no big deal, it was nicely put together but I like my KDE and kde tools. Having used MDK10 with 2.6 kernel on same laptop, it was a big letdown. My guess is that ver.2 is SuSE 9. Maybe I will take the time to load it, maybe I will just stick with Knoppix 3.4, or Xandros 2 biz. :)

This doesnt sound like a good desktop alternative.

[ShadowRage]

This sounds more like a development environment than an actual desktop. or an environment for certain business tools, but mostly for development.

I dont see this as being the next major winning desktop for the avereage joe.