Glynn Foster wrote on his blog that Sun’s throwing away the desktop which is based on GNOME because of different problems they see in maintaining it. There is also a full article about it on LXer.
Glynn Foster wrote on his blog that Sun’s throwing away the desktop which is based on GNOME because of different problems they see in maintaining it. There is also a full article about it on LXer.
nowhere did I get any information about Sun “throwing away the desktop”.
When will journalism rid itself of soundbites, and actually report the FACTS?
In neither the “full article” nor the very useless blog, is there any fact that would support this submission’s title. Nada. Just an opportunity to throw some mud at Sun.
You do realize that “throwing away” doesn’t nescesarly mean “quit developing it”? “Throwing it away” may also mean, “wasting it”.
And please, stop accusing newssites for being anti-[insert name] whenever they publish an anti-[insert name] article. It’s getting OLD.
Thom,
it would really nice if you could actually quote the article’s thrust successfully in your synopsis.
There is a world of difference between what you wrote and what Glynn wrote.
You might as well have written something like “Tom Adelstein’s beef with Sun gets dragged up again” which would in fact have been much more accurate.
The point of Glynn’s blog entry is that Sun is decoupling JDS from a specific linux distribution (SuSe) and making it more generic thus making it easier to maintain across a variety of different operating systems including linux and Solaris in all their various guises.
Agreed; this is pretty misleading. Glynn uses the phrase “Throw Away Desktop” which is a direct quote from the second article, which in turn appears to be a misquote of Tom Adelstein (author of the book “Exploring the JDS Linux Desktop”).
What Sun is in fact doing is to cancel its SUSE-based Linux-distribution, and refocus JDS as the desktop for Solaris (x86 and Sparc):
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/desktop/communities/jds/
Glynn’s working for Sun, so basicly his comments are trustable. Whom to believe if you can’t believe someone directly involved into that and specially the JDS Desktop ?
Glynn’s working for Sun, so basicly his comments are trustable. Whom to believe if you can’t believe someone directly involved into that and specially the JDS Desktop ?
Yes, Glynn is certainly a trustable source but he never said that “Sun’s throwing away the desktop” as the link text implies.
A more accurate characterization would be to say that “Sun’s throwing away its Linux-based JDS”.
Personally, I’m looking forward to checking out the updated Solaris-JDS.
I haven’t compared them in any great depth but the Linux-based JDS 2.x live CD looks just like the JDS in Solaris 10.
Of course the Live CD doesn’t have dtrace, Solaris zones or a binary that replaces the init scripts that Linux uses, etc., etc., etc., in short, it has no Solaris. And the Live CD has much better support for the hardware that I have than Solaris does, so I run Solaris in VMware. But they both come with gcc, mozilla, GAIM, and quite a few other common open or free components.
I like each one for different uses and reasons, but flame me if you feel the need. <]8^?)
Both linked articles were incoherent rants are hardly readable. I’ll wait till eWeek writes something and we’ll actually learn something.
Yeah, this article was horrible like the other article that Thom posted from this site was.
Well, you had to look deep in both entry and article to find any story. It’s not strictly Gnome he’s talking about, and it’s difficult to say exactly what he’s talking about really – he seems to be avoiding an issue. He seems to be talking about having more control over the environment with Solaris, but quite what direction Sun are heading in from this is impossible to tell.
It confirms what we’ve all known anyway – JDS is a complete disaster, and not even Sun knows what they’re going to do with it. There are no deployments of the JDS in China, or indeed anywhere that Sun has said there are. I hardly think switching from Linux to Solaris will make it any better.
Learn something from eWeak? I hope that’s merely subtle sarcasm…
<flamebait>And here I was hoping they’d finally gotten smart and switched to KDE.</flamebait>
Pro-Linux, one of germans most prefered news site for Linux and Open Source wrote an indepth article about the situation so germans who are not well aware of the english language can go and read there.
http://www.pro-linux.de/news/2005/8840.html
As I see it, this doesn’t appear to be a matter of Sun abandoning the JDS desktop, as much as it is significantly deemphasizing JDS on Linux in favor of JDS on *Solaris (Solaris and OpenSolaris).
“Religous” arguments aside, *Solaris are viable alternatives to Linux, and certainly ones that Sun would be expected to favor.
Inasmuch as most if not all of JDS is open source, and that the APIs of all are reasonably compatible, the JDS desktop will continue to have potential for those prefer Linux. Certainly some porting and integration issues will occur, but it is not a total loss for Linux aficionados, and it may remain a net gain in the long term.
Those who emphasize the value of JDS will perceive this as a relatively neutral matter. Those who emphasize the value of *Solaris will see this as a relatively positive matter. And those who emphasize the value of Linux will see this as a relative negative matter. I interpret these articles to come from a viewpoint closest to the last of these.
[edited to remove a misspelling that changed the meaning of one sentence.]
Edited 2005-11-02 22:29
So just after open sourcing JDS, it’s now obsolte, basically. THAAAANKS.
I remember the early reviews for Sun’s JDS Linux desktop system. It was based on Suse, minus everything that made Suse good. Basic items lacking were, good hardware support, a wide selection of software, and good utilities. Some reviewers argued that JDS would work in an enterprise environment consisting of Sun computers, but that was about the only positive thing anyone said about it.
Version 2 debuted in 2004. Reviews were mixed. eWeek gushed when comparing it to Red Hat. The rest were less kind. One reviewer stated it had the Sun name attached to it, but that was its only advantage. The review in OSNews mentioned that it still ran Gnome 2.2, and carried with it a host of bugs present in the previous version. In short, it has always looked like Sun basically threw this thing together, but never had its heart in it.
Thus, the comments from the LXer article, that mention broken promises, the lies and mixed messages from Scott McNealy, the infighting with the Solaris team, are hardly news.
People have had good things to say about Sun, particularly their Solaris OS running on Sparc hardware, but what else has Sun accomplished? It’s too soon to comment on Solaris 10 on x86; the hardware and software support isn’t there yet. As for Open Solaris, I don’t think Sun can do open source.
Peter Besenbruch
> The review in OSNews mentioned that it still ran Gnome
> 2.2, and carried with it a host of bugs present in the
> previous version. In short, it has always looked like
> Sun basically threw this thing together, but never had
> its heart in it.
Ever considered that the JDS bugs described in GNOME 2.2 used at Sun is not Sun’s fault ? It’s not them who threw the things together, it’s the true GNOME that behaves like this. You can’t blame Sun for the mistakes and failures that GNOME as desktop represents.
Ever considered that the JDS bugs described in GNOME 2.2 used at Sun is not Sun’s fault ? It’s not them who threw the things together, it’s the true GNOME that behaves like this. You can’t blame Sun for the mistakes and failures that GNOME as desktop represents.
Very true; the problem is also shown in the bugzilla; open bug reports from up to 2 years ago; same goes for GTK; constant bickering between the different approaches to solving a problem; duplication of functionality for no obvious reason; then add ontop of that, the failure by GNOME developers that the world doesn’t revolve around Linux.
I’m hoping that maybe Looking Glass can be turned into a good replacement for GNOME – atleast it would be a piece of software designed from scratch without all the legacy and bottle necks that exist in the current GNOME product lineup.
> Ever considered that the JDS bugs described in GNOME 2.2 used at Sun is not Sun’s fault
Sun knows that, by working on older GNOME versions, they get to work on it alone. The SUN developers know that they need to fix that development strategy. New products should use relatively new versions of code, that other distros are also working on. Old branches of code should be maintained and phased out.
This is like the difference between Debian and Ubuntu. Ubuntu has a desktop that’s impressive today.
Murray.
solaris is supposed to be used as a workstaton or server. putting on an ill-fitting bloated desktop is plain silly. i don’t know anyone who uses it – CDE is fine, or a minimal desktop. you didn’t buy that expensive hardware to waste it on the desktop or extremely bloated software. have you seen how many dependencies get installed the gnome desktop. and then on top of that the so-called JDS desktop isnt even very mature – it is inconsistent, has bugs and they won’t be fixed anytime soon (maybe in gnome, not in the bundked JDS). and then gnome runs silly daemons which are overkill – they run daemons o give it functionality for desktop users – a very unwise thing to do on a server/workstation OS.
i;m keeping my old solaris CDs in case Sun go mad and star making gnome+dependencies part of the default supported OS.
Like I’ve said so many times, Sun has developed a lot of great technology throughout its life, but it has developed only a few (if any) good products.
Solaris might be have a great kernel, but as an overall operating system it sucks! An operating system not only includes the kernel and related routines, but also the gui and basic user applications. In the case of Solaris, until the other day this only amounted to CDE and a few crappy apps, so I cannot any fuzz about Solaris, OpenSolaris or anything else for that matter.
I’ve personally installed Solaris a gazillion times and worked with a truck load of Sparc servers and workstations in the past. Definitely well built machines, but overly expensive and non-standard. In my book, that’s not something I would ever buy.
In the late nineties, I was extremely happy to find out they had a version of Solaris for x86 machines. I wanted to have a copy of it at home so I could do testing at home on things I would do later at work. Well, the only problem was that it suck! And this is SOP with Sun!
Just like the article mentions, Sun executives keep changing views on technology every other week. At one point, they loved Linux, then they hated it. At another point, the said they hated open source. Then they stated, they loved it! Heck, they have a few open projects like OpenOffice and NetBeans, but in overall Sun seems to be playing a confusing tune all the time, while contradicting themselves very often.
Now, their President and COO must be sniffing something all the time, as this guy contradicts himself (while pissing off people left and right) all the time. He seems to have a bandetta against Linux, but it’s not constant. Again, things w/ Sun’s brass changes depending on the way the wind blows, which is another reason why I don’t buy anything from them.
The bottom line is that companies need to provide a constant message. Sure, we are human, and we can change our minds at a personal level. But at a professional level, as far as companies is concerned, this is not something to be doing all the time, as it creates FUD on their customers. Who wants to buy a product from a company that does not follow through?