“Open source is ready for the real world. Sun Microsystems’ just-released Java Desktop System for x86 is a polished Linux desktop that rivals Windows XP and even Mac OS X for fit, finish and ease of use. Whether corporations, governments and educational institutions adopt it will likely have more to do with migration issues and financial concerns than the viability of this Gnome-based user environment.” Read the review at NewsForge.
NewsForge Review: Java Desktop System on Linux
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
It looks like Gnome or Blue Curve to me, which means it’s gotta be Linux under the hood. It looks pretty good, though I wonder about the curious name.
Check the previous Sun stories and their comments, we talked about it there.
The first point raised in the article was that the Gnome 2.2-based Mad Hatter distribution is far more polished than the Gnome 2.0 offering on Solaris. This is somewhat troublesome to me, as for my workstation users here I’ve still been reluctant to try to get them to drop CDE in favor of Gnome. Regardless, it’s clear that Sun has put a considerable amount of work into making Mad Hatter the most polished Linux distribution to date.
I especially enjoyed this comment as well:
Murphy’s law of hierarchical file systems states that if a directory exists, and if it is writable, a user will save something important to it, and have no idea how to find it later (short of calling the IT department).
I think many of the wonderful advantages which Sun was trying to bring to an office environment with Sunray networks would go unused simply because they’re beyond the grasp of the average user. This would include group collaboration on documents as all documents would reside on the same filesystem, and Unix’s group permissions could be used to provide access to documents by many people collaborating on a project. Unfortunately, this is all useless if your users don’t grasp the concept of hierarchial filesytems…
Given that gnome is supposedly going to replace CDE as the default DE from Solaris 10 onwards, has there being any noise out of sun wether they will use “Mad Hatter” as their default gnome setup on solaris as well?
if you ask me it would make sense, least that way they would only have to maintain one version of GNOME for both their solaris and linux offerings
by the way i attempt from time to time to translate gnome into irish, someday i may finish it 😉
Gnome 2.0 is bundled with the current public preview of Solaris 10. Given that, I doubt the Mad Hatter-tweaked Gnome 2.2 will be bundled with the final release, although it would be very much welcome, although Gnome 2.0 alone is rather slow on the Ultra 10 on which I installed the Solaris 10 preview.
ok we agree that you are so called “Geek” but MadHatter is under the hood linux. so “don’t shoot when you don’t know what the target is…………………”
And this my friends is why “IT” people get no respect.
Could we possibly get away from exact clones of the Windows 95 desktop layout here in 2003? Seriously, it’s getting ridiculous to the extreme. Like it would be blasphemy to even think of trying a different layout, our heads would explode.
“Mars attacks!”? ;o))))
Bah. It looks good enough. And it’s definitely familiar (Win95 look), so it’ll need less retraining. Remember, Sun is aiming at the enterprise users with this package. Me, I could have lived with CDE.
It will be interesting to see what will happen in Solaris 10, with regards to UI.
I agree completely, however if you really look back at Windows 95 you’ll realize that it’s nothing like it, other than the button in the bottom left corner. 😉 I’m all about creating a whole new interface, and there are a ton of those available to power users. (Fluxbox, XFCE, WindowMaker, E, etc..)
Launch button in lower left corner, to the right of that the taskbar, the system tray and clock in the lower right-hand corner of the screen, min-max-close buttons in the top right corner of the application titlebar (putting Close right next to Max in Win95 was the dumbest thing MS ever did, why perpetuate it?), application icon on the top-left corner of the application title bar, five desktop icons aligned to the left of the desktop with a “My Computer” clone on the top, a “My Documents” clone below that, a “Network Neighborhood” clone below that, and a “Recycle Bin” clone below that. The only thing that’s missing for the true Windows 95 experience is an icon for The Microsoft Network.
I’m of the opinion that most people who want the Windows 95 look and feel will use Windows, it would only intrigue and interest potential customers to present them with a different desktop metaphor, even if it’s just all the same old crap mixed around. This kind of desktop excites no one, does not catch the eye or arouse curiosity, and actually looks kind of revolting 8, like Windows 95 with a very bad WindowBlinds skin designed by a 13 year old boy.
Sorry, I’m just a little disappointed that almost every company sans Apple tha comes out with a product to compete with Windows thinks the way to go about it is copying its desktop metaphor exactly.
Could we possibly get away from exact clones of the Windows 95 desktop layout here in 2003? Seriously, it’s getting ridiculous to the extreme. Like it would be blasphemy to even think of trying a different layout, our heads would explode.
Can you please explain how deviating from the taskbar’s mental model, which virtually every computer user in the world is familiar with, would be beneficial to Sun’s key demographic with this launch. There is no reason to be different simply for the sake of being different (although many Linux zealots seem to have this mentality… god only knows why)
Novice users will be extremely frustrated when their mental model of how a computer works deviates from how they expect a computer to work. This is why novice users who have started on PCs are extremely frustrated by Macs, and vice versa, as the interfaces are largely discontiguous in many key areas.
As Sun’s installed base of desktop systems is *extremely* small compared to that of Microsoft or Apple, deviation from accepted paradigms would only be harmful, as Sun must rely on having an interface that is both similar to Windows and consistent in order for users to make the transition effectively.
Bottom line: If you’re attempting to get users to transition to your new desktop operating system, that’s not a good time to try out wacky new interface ideas.
>>Can you please explain how deviating from the taskbar’s mental model…would be beneficial to Sun’s key demographic with this launch
The same reason the release of Windows 95 had people lined up around the block at midnight to get a copy. It had an exciting new interface that bore no resemblence at all to Windows 3.1 and very little resemblence to Mac OS. It was fresh, different, and exciting, and that’s what people want, that’s what causes people to get out their wallets. Most average users of Windows/AOL think computers are boring, gee I wonder why. Maybe because the interfaces haven’t changed in 8 years. Desktop users care about looks more than underpinnings, and it’s new interfaces that make them want to upgrade more than anything else. I remember how disappointed the non-technical crowd was when Windows 98 had the same interface as Windows 95. “But it looks the same” were the groans I heard from my friends who couldn’t care less that the bugs were fixed and hardware support was better. New OS, they wanted a fun and pretty new interface. MS didn’t oblige until XP, and then only in a very, very small way, nothing like the tremendous leap they made in interface design from 3.11 to 95.
This Java Desktop System is being targeted at places like Call Centers and Banks (ie: for tellers) with large numbers of desktops that only need the basics: Web, Email, Productivity, and maybe a few custom apps like CRM or whatnot (written with Java/Swing or the Web via J2EE of course).
This isn’t for “Joe User” (I’d like to meet this guy sometime. He seems to lead an interesting life, never the same from one account to the next) except as handed down by corporate IT. It isn’t for Joe Hacker either.
With that in mind, the benefit of OSS is that Sun can charge less per desktop, can customize it to take out or modify the potentially confusing and unmanageable features (did you see the stuff like being able to enable/disable SO macros network wide from a single web control panel?) to make the workload on IT that much less. It may be as boring as the Windows 95 UI seems now, but the underlying system should theoretically be much more manageable and less prone to breakage by the corporate users. And with a familiar UI layout, retraining costs should be less (though I don’t know what this talk of a new spatial Nautilus UI means for that line of reasoning).
There are alot of corporate desktops out there that don’t really need what Windows has to offer (no snickering in the back please). Those same companies don’t need 10,000 Linux desktops customized and tricked out up the wazoo by each individual user. Both become maintenance nightmares for different reasons.
New OS, they wanted a fun and pretty new interface. MS didn’t oblige until XP, and then only in a very, very small way,
People like (want) new environments, but 90% of them want something they can be familiar with
not something that makes them think more than 5 minutes about how to open the menu, the file manager or the properties of a file. The same goes for me when I have to finish something at 6 PM
New GUIs doesn’t seem to be here any time soon, the current layout of GUIs seems to be the most practical for 90 % of human beings. Windows is a winner on this (don’t be too upset with it)
I agree that Sun (or Linux GUI Designers or any other GUI Application interface Designer) shouldn’t make radical layouts and get more criticized and lower acceptance because of it,
but I will also agree that the GUI doesn’t look very professional (the tittle bar buttons most of all) and will be boring after 2 hours of work.
The colors and widgets (the rounded address bar is the most criticisable one) are too dark and monotonous.
I would liked to see the default “Start” button and the task bar on top like the Mac OS since that’s the more ergonomical place to put those (near the application titlebar) and here is a new feature for new users that they could easily get familar with, for example.
In the end flexible custom possibilities are even more important than the default layout.
> This isn’t for “Joe User” (I’d like to meet this guy sometime. He seems to lead an interesting life, never the same from one account to the next)
That was a good one !
🙂
(I know it’s off topic)
there are lots of arguments as why linux is not popular among home users….. lets face it it is hard to use. how ever since Linux is open source thats why such customized linux (Sun’s desktop linux, Lindows) & thats what linux future is if it wants to get popular among home users
There is always room for another vendor pushing linux, in whatever form it takes. Bear in mind that *any* increased marketshare for linux is a good thing, be that from Sun, Lindows or anyone else. Even SCO.
STSF is their corner stone of GNOME for Solaris and unfortunately their website, stsf.sf.net, has been “all quiet on the western front”. Could anyone at SUN confirm whether the project is dead or “in secret development”? As for the Java Desktop System, I see no reason why SUN wouldn’t make it available on their server. If it means making the server easier to manage, thus, lower costs associated with setting one up, it would be a bonus to SUN and to their customers.
Free for personal use, without support.
$90/yr for commercial use, with 90 days support.
read news:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=11632
download:
http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/solaris-express/sol_index.html
I have used MSWindows for ten years, and still hasn’t learnd how to do things that took me 1 year to learn on Linux. Fact is the thigs I learned in Linux accelerated my windows learning. I couldn’t configure a network in windows properly before I learned it in Linux…
But I think it is correct to asume that in an environment aimed at productivity it would be stupid to require the entire staff to relearn their tools if the gain wasn’t tremendous.
A change from Qwerty to Dvorak could be a money saver for a company. Changing menu layouts however is probably stupid.
For new design ideas one should take a peak at THE(The humane editor/environment). And for CLI lovers, G-Chip and XML-Term seems exiting I think. I rather see an xml-processing hires CLI than new places to stuff the taskbar.
It is an interesting marketing name they have given their Gnome based Suse distribution.
But putting that aside, does Java run better on their distro than say Redhat 9 that uses NPTL? Have Sun patched the Suse kernel to add the NPTL layer. If not RH9 is still faster for Java Developers/Users than their distro which is branded as the Java Desktop System.
Does anyone know if it does use NPTL.
I had the above thought when I read this article.
http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/JavaTecha…
http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/JavaTecha…
Red Hat Linux 9, with its new thread library, Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL), along with changes in the Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition 1.4.2 (J2SE 1.4.2), combine to deliver improved startup time, reliability. and scalability out of the box. The result for developers is that their applications will not only start faster, but will reliably scale to a larger number of threads than was previously possible.
Regarding the NPTL in SuSE linux 8.2, that is a hard one. From their UnitedLinux based distribution, they’re using NGPL, however, since development of that has stopped, NTPL may have been added. IMHO, I couldn’t see why SUN wouldn’t include NTPL considering it would benefit the end user quite alot.
Thanks for the reply.
If Sun did add it, it may be the second distro (that I know of) that has NPTL included after Redhat 9.
I think it will be standard in all future distro’s that use the 2.6 kernel anyway.
Hey, it’s SuSE and GNOME…I’m sure you can change the GUI to your liking, but as has been said, the audience for this product is CIOs who have hundreds (or thousands) of Windows users who need to be productive on day 1 after a switchover.
Yes, the choice of names is unfortunate but understandable. I would have preferred “Star Desktop” to leverage the positive Star Office brand…but the fact is that Java is a huge success and only one company has the right to name their product “Java something” without licensing it from Sun, and that’s Sun. They need to toot their own horn a bit.
There isn’t a lot that makes this O.S. “more Java” than others, but they do include JavaCard support which the Dept of Defense and others use for security. You will be able to login/authenticate with a physical device for added trustworthy computing, to borrow an inappropriate term for Microsoft’s efforts.
Speaking of which, only two companies in the world have licensed the graphical user interface from Xerox, and are therefore legally safe in shipping a GUI….Sun and Metaphor (which was bought by IBM)…just a bit of trivia.