Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Wed 2nd Jun 2004 03:13 UTC
Sun introduced recently the second version of Java Desktop System (JDS) for a flat fee per employee/per year. We tried it and here is what we found out about:
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No I haven't used it, and I have no desire to do so. Reading about all those bugs, the ancient base (kernel 2.4.19?) and seeing those dreadfully ugly screenshots makes me feel sorry for Sun. I mean, if a billion dollar tech giant can't technologically compete with one guy and his spare time, on one of their flagship products, you have to wonder what the heck is going on at Sun.
How difficult would it really be to get a base (Redhat/Fedora or Mandrake, it doesn't matter), slap on kernel 2.6, GNOME 2.6 and the newly GPL'ed YaST? Clear themselves of the SuSE cruft etc. altogether and start building a stable, powerful modern system. While they're at it, they could make Swing play nice with GTK+2 (I think it does already, or is that just GTK+1?), have all their Java apps use it and have a consistent desktop at the very least.
Currently everything just screams "half-assed". Not what you'd expect from a company that is supposed to be an industry leader.
Putting my tin-foil hat on here, I wouldn't be suprised if Sun is trying to offload such a terribly buggy, ugly and outdated GNU/Linux product to give more credence to Solaris. The worst bit is, the pricing isn't *that* great anyway.