Guest columnist Tom Adelstein takes a look at the latest version of Sun’s Java Desktop System. Adelstein, the author of a forthcoming book on Sun’s JDS, offers a well-schooled view of how this version of the Linux desktop is a serious challenger to Microsoft.
Timing Perfect for Sun’s Java Desktop System
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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The piece is baseless and reads like a marketing ploy rather than a review. Some examples (something the article does little of):
The major applications have tweaks that Sun added to make JDS special. The key productivity applications include StarOffice, Evolution, GIMP, Mozilla and gaim. They compete with Microsoft Office and Outlook, Adobe Photoshop, Internet Explorer and AOL Instant Messenger. You can find versions of these applications in other distributions but Sun’s just work better.
No more ‘evidence’ is given. Just accept that ‘Sun makes their apps better’ than competing Linux distributions.
As a Microsoft Product Specialist, I say that StarOffice exceeds the quality of any MS Office product.
I’m one of the last people to defend MS, but this comment is just flamebait. Again, no example or evidence is provided. Just accept that ‘Star Office exceeds the quality of MS Office’.
For Outlook users, you’ll find that Sun gives you a friendly interface and features you don’t get in Outlook.
WHAT THE HELL!? WHAT FEATURES!? He just goes on and on without describing or proving his points.
What about this for a rubbish comment:
For the makers of gFTP, I recommend building a version just for Sun.
What? Why would they build a version ‘just for Sun’?
That was one of the shallowest, most unfounded, subjective, and generally trashy Linux distribution reviews I have ever read. It did not deserve to be mentioned by OSnews.
I thought only one DVD method was illegal, I thought one of the libs was still “questionable”. I’m curious if it’s legal or not?
As a Microsoft Product Specialist, I say that StarOffice exceeds the quality of any MS Office product.
I have to second you here. StarOffice is a nice product, but it doesn’t match the quality of MS Office. MS Office has a lot of features that either StarOffice doesn’t have, or, even if StarOffice has them, they’re much easier to use in MS Office. Example: displaying the equation of a nonlinear regression curve. Maybe Sun or OpenOffice has fixed that by now, but as of last year, neither I nor anyone else could figure out how to display the equation of a linear regression curve. We could graph the curve alright, but its equation? Should have been as easy as checking a box — you know, the way MS Office does it.
I think some of Charlie’s rhetoric is unnecessarily emphatic, but his point is spot-on: The article makes plently of assessments, but offers no argument/evidence for them. The peice is essentially groundless. (This is not to say anything about the quality of Sun’s Linux distro, of course, and that’s the point: The article doesn’t say aything about it either.)
The article also fails to provide real detail on the price merely stating “You can purchase JDS for $50 before June 2, 2004 and wind up with free updates for one year. After June 2nd, the system cost goes to $100US” At first glance that seems like a good deal, but the Sun website states that the cost is on sale for “US $50US per desktop per year.”
So basically, in order to receive updates and patches will I have to pay Sun a subscription fee each year? Not even Micrsoft does that; Windows Update is free. How does that lower business costs? For desktop systems, most businesses don’t pay Microsoft a yearly subscription fee. Eventually, you’ll pay more in subscription costs than if you were to buy Windows and Office.
I like the look of JDS and the software bundled with it and was ready to shell out the $50 US to try it out. Then I found out the fee is subscription based and changed my mind.
In my opinion a company has a responsibility to the consumer to ensure their product is reliable and free of critical flaws. Making the consumer pay extra money for these flaws to get fixed is unacceptable.
Yes, Star Office is not bad at all, but when some Microsoft documents look ugly if opened by Star Office, or don’t open at all, that is very annoying to say the least.
Good job that MS Office works just fine with Crossover.
I use Office XP (SP3) everyday and have used Star Office just in the last few days. I’m not a big Micro$oft fan, but Office is a hell of a product and Star Office is not Micro$oft Office. Star Office is good, but this article is nothing but an ad. He must be getting ad money from Sun.
> but when some Microsoft documents look ugly if opened by
> Star Office, or don’t open at all, that is very annoying to
> say the least.
Dude, have you actually dealt with problematic MS Word documents?
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/3154
Look, all I really miss from M$ is a good download manager (like GetRight) and Real One instead of Real Player.
Otherwise in my Suse box I have got everything I need and much more.
Logical conclusion: if linux is not ready for the home desktop yet, it is very, very near.
Good article, I’ll read it more carefully later.
But look, I am the biggest open source fan out there.
Of course if M$ office documents don’t open, I can’t blame Open Office or Star Office.
There should be a compulsory standard for all documents, IMO.
I personally like JDS (not with technical reason, just personal).
And this article favors JDS _a lot_ (which, generally, I should love to read it).
Sadly, I just can’t make my mind to accept any point of this article, it just has no evidence at all.
Anyway, I don’t think Sun hired him to wrote this piece of ..
I still believe that Sun is smart enough not to do so
If this is what linux advocacy is boiling down to, I think I’m just going to go buy a mac.
What a senseless pile of drivel.
This was obviously an opinion piece, not a review, so I don’t know why people are so up in arms. The guy is entitled to voice an opinion, and frankly, if he did even half the stuff he claimed to at the begining of the article then Id say his opinion has great merrit. He seems to have done quite a bit of research into JDS.
I agree with his assesment too. JDS is not my desktop of choice, but it did strike me as being an excellent choice for the workplace. One of the best.
The first ruling was against using the DeCSS program, not DVD’s. This means you can view DVDs that are not encrypted. You can also use them to make your own DVDs.
There was a 2nd ruling overturing the ruling against DeCSS as it is not a circumvention program at all.
Who cares if it is a contender or not to Microsoft?
I don’t. I just want a Linux Desktop where i can do my daily stuff without worries of “fuzzy” configs and weird “patchs”. The problem with Linux in my humble view isn’t one of power but one of user interface and user friendlyness.
As for DeCSS, well, the whole thing is just bogus because if you own a DVD player in the computer and a DVD, you already own a licence to the “crypto-code” to play the DVD’s… I may be wrong… but i don’t have the “legalize” and the time to persue the “licencing” model of the several millions of DVD licences…
Getright =kbear =wget (command line) =kget(GUI)
Make your pic…
Konqueror and Mozilla have built-in resume dowload support.
Real One, get the Helix player or RealPlayer 8 with the nine codecs.
The right time was when Windows 3.1. was released. SUN or IBM could have done it then. But given the fantastic margins they were making on UNIX hardware, they couldn’t be bothered.
Now is too late for SUN alone. They have to band with the other Linux vendors to get support from significant providers like Macromedia, Adobe, hardware manufacturers to get it off the ground.
Is Gnome GPL ? If so, where one can download sources of Gnome tweaked by SUN ?
To the people that say SUN hired him, I say you are dead wrong, I have been working on a project with Tom for the last month and a bit (JDS related) and I can certainly say he is dead impressed with JDS, as was I, although there were lots of issues with their v1.0 release, they are easily overcome!
I’ve had the opportunity to have JDS installed, and i have to agree with most of Adelstein’s comments. Howether, as a linux/KDE user I will keep running my favorite free distro. I like choice and i like to tweak my OS to my convience. Therefore I don’t mind if my KDE pgm’s doesn’t always run smoothly on a gnome tweaked distro that i’ve choosen primarely for it’s server and network abilities. So, when i make my opinion about JDS, I keep in mind that JDS was design in first instance to operate in an office environment. And sun’s succeed to integrate star office with a good selection of freeware. Every Linx user has his own preferences. I choose kmail instead of evolution for instance. The most important for sun was to make his mind between all those applications the open source has to offer, in order, to compose a consistant menu without redundancies and to keep inheriting the legendary stablility of linux. But when i started to read the article, I expected comments on what I was the most curious in the JDS. What about the Java for their Desktop ?
I have used SUN’s JDS and it is great linux desktop. I think this is one of the best desktop out there for newbies. If you want no hassle install and setup SUN JDS is for you. the easy of use and Star Office is one the best office package out there. I would ike to see open standard in docs such as word and spread sheet whiich star office(open office) offers.
The ease of use of evolutiong, samba, network setup is trivial. JDS offers ease of use and solid security of linux. Yes you dont have to worry about email virus eating up your system like windoze and you dont get blue screen of death.
Great job SUN .
I have been interested in trying JDS and was interested in Tom’s article. I do not flame people who go to the trouble of writing a piece for publication. I wish that Tom would extrapolate on his experience that led him to his conclusions – if it’s three or four more pages, I’ll read it.
The biggest advantage of Linux over Windows is that it is free. Why should companies pay 100 Dollars for the Suse based JDS desktop (basically, it is a modified Suse 9 Professional) if they can simply copy a Suse DVD for free (which is perfectly legal)?
I bought a copy of JDS, and for the most part, it seems pretty much the same as SuSE, except that I can’t find a package repository for it.
If Sun has enhanced some of the packages so they work better, I’d love to know more. This evangelical tiptoe through the tulips wasn’t informative or even a review.
It’s illegal. To watch any kind of DVD, you need to decode the CSS with which it’s protected. To decode the CSS legally, you need a purchased key. None of the DVD decoding libs on Linux have a purchased key.
nt
I found the writing amateurish and largely content-free. One might as well write, “I gave JDS two gold stars and a smiley face.”