Sun Microsystems has taken the wraps off a new version of its Java Desktop System (JDS) running on its Solaris OS. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based network computer maker, which made its JDS Release 2 software available this past weekend, said it has now ported the desktop environment to Solaris running Intel and AMD x86-based servers and workstations.
Sun Lights up Java Desktop on x86
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I am utterly confused as to what exactly is Java Desktop System. I thought initially that it was the name of Sun’s linux distro which used a modified Gnome as the desktop environment (and comes with Java..). Now, Java Desktop System is running on Solaris OS. So, what exactly is that?
Osho
>>”A few people, including Sun folks, may even run JDS on Solaris. But JDS for Linux is the key to broader acceptance,” he said.
Ride the Linux wave and then slowly phase out and replace with Solaris under the canopy of “Java Desktop System”.
Is this even important for x86? does this really matter?
Sun is just another road apple for linux and microsoft with a loud mouth cry baby at the wheel. Verbal wars with your competitors while the ship goes down?
Last ditch if you ask me.
Not to flame here, and I appologize for my bluntness, but why would I or anyone else care about a company with a low-end product portfolio and poor public/press ethics. It’s too easy to find another solution (if you are aware).
You never hear guys like Donald Trump or Anthony Robbins whine about their hardships or tough times.
Why do you think that is?
Its about time SUN makes a decent decision. A professional OS with a professional Desktop. Its great to see SUN start investing in their own products. Win Win for SUN!
or take off the tinfoil hat and see that This way you get your choice of OS with the_same great desktop-this consolidates the GUI codebases for them
*curls up hand and makes shaking motion*
“Ride the Linux wave and then slowly phase out and replace with Solaris under the canopy of “Java Desktop System”.”
Might as well get used to this approach. Novell and IBM are likely to perform the same with a twist or two added to the mix.
These big players couldn’t give a rats ass about Linux, open source, RMS, or the Man of the Moon….. They want cash; screw the rest of it.
@CaptainPinko
>>or take off the tinfoil hat…
I’ll take my tinfoil hat off when Sun replaces their management with people who are actually business savvy.
Sun is pushing Solaris X86 as hard as they can, they’ve made it quite clear from their weekly rants/FUD fest. Companies like IBM/HP/Novell evaluate the situation and propose accurate solutions that may not even be in their favor. I remember that Novell suggested that NLD shouldn’t be used to replace Windows in a particular office setting. Good assessments = customer trust. Sun OTOH doesn’t have a clue. Its Solaris this, SPARC that. They’ll only change when their back is against the wall.
When did Sun turn into a X86 shop?
@Anonymous
>>These big players couldn’t give a rats ass about Linux, open source, RMS, or the Man of the Moon….. They want cash; screw the rest of it.
Yup pretty much.
There has certainly been some confusion.
To my knowledge, the Java Desktop System was always the layering on top of the O/S. Unfortunately that is not the message that appears to have been “heard”.
It just happened that it was first presented on top of Linux. It was always going to be put on top of Solaris on both the SPARC and x86 platforms, and the next release of Solaris express should also include it.
Currently I am running build of JDS3 that should be going in to Solaris 10 build 70 as my normal desktop on my notebook and I am very happy with the feel of it.
Hi,
Any word on when the next build of SolExpress will be out? Things seems to have been somewhat quiet on that front lately. The latest build I can get my hands on seems to be 8/04, which doesn’t quite satisfy by urge for the bleeding edge. Will 10/04 (is that right?) have ZFS as well as JDS? Also, what release of Gnome will this be?
Thanks,
Victor
No official word on when the next one would be out, but it we go with the build that we’re looking at, maybe (much) later in the month.
Sorry folks, no ZFS yet.
If it is the build that we’re looking at, it should have JDS3 in there, which would mean gnome 2.6ish.
As soon as I can actually say something firm about when/what, I’ll put it into my blog at http://blogs.sun.com/tpenta
Hope that helps (sorry I can’t be more specific yet).
Alan.
Doesn’t *anyone* read the Java Desktop System website?
Java Desktop System, Release 2 delivers the best of open source software with the technical innovation of Sun to offer an affordable, comprehensive, fully integrated desktop client environment with administration and developer tools and an enterprise-ready support offering that lowers business costs, reduces complexities of desktop management, and provides a secure computing environment.
Please, oh lord, where is the statement that Java Desktop System is a Linux distribution? Every manager so far has said that the “Java Desktop System is available on Linux and Solaris x86”, so what does that tell you?
No official word on when the next one would be out, but it we go with the build that we’re looking at, maybe (much) later in the month.
Sorry folks, no ZFS yet.
IIRC, from what I have heard, ZFS is being pushed back to the first quarterly update of ZFS, apparently its booting nicely with SPARC, which is understandable considering how beautiful OpenBoot is, however, the x86 road apparently is like going to hell and back.
Regarding the Solaris 10 x86-64, would it be correct in assuming it will have the same feature set as the x86-32 and SPARC versions? JDS? anyone giving the x86-64 version of Solaris 10 a go on the new x86-64 workstations? oh, and how does Solaris 10 run on SUN Blade 150 workstations?
seems Suns objective was to do a bait and switch with Linux amd Solaris x86. I would be shocked if Solaris x86 offered half the hardware support that the Linux kernel supports, or capaple of running most OSS, and commercial software available for the PC.
Obviously Solaris is a very capable system for servers, but why you would want to run it on your desktop or laptop?
Sun’s business strategy makes no sense to me at all..
Out of that whole article, here is the most important part:
About the only things Sun has not been able to bundle in its next JDS are extensions based on its new relationship with Microsoft . Sun has previously said that level of support will come in due time through the use of shared APIs and protocols for Exchange.
Finally all these mysterious dealings with Microsoft and confusing products using open source technology are starting to come together. Looks like Sun has figured out that one of the biggest locks MS has on small and mid-size businesses is MS Exchange. By making a ‘deal with the devil’ with Microsoft, Sun avoids lawsuits from and gains API information from MS. They also get to use all the work already put in by Gnome developers to use for their desktop system but add in the propiertary Exchange compatibility layer and give businesses a reason to pay a license for it (OpenExchange connector thing by Ximian doesn’t count either, it doesn’t connect into the full capabilities of MS Exchange that are the reasons most businesses use it). Now if Sun would only develop a groupware server that’s fully compatible with Exchange (drop-in replacement, no need for add-ons in MS Outlook) but costs less to license and runs on Solaris and Linux then they would really have a product to sell.
Actually, Apple computers are limited in hardware support too. if you think of business computers, i do not think it is horribly important to support all web cams and digital cameras around..
However, even so, once you open sourced Solaris, i do not think it would be very difficult to use linux hardware drivers in solaris..
Hi,
Just a small note: I believe there’s some Project something-or-other which allows you to run Linux binaries natively (right word?) on Solaris – kernel level.
Also, I think that they’ve actually ported some of the Linux drivers to Sol anyway – XF86 Binary drivers is one example I know of – anyway, hw support is meant to be dramatically improved (usb wheel mouse – yay!) – check out the HCL (maybe I should before posting *grin*)
bye,
Victor
How to reduce available hardware drivers by more than 95%
Short answer: replace Linux by Solaris x86
seems Suns objective was to do a bait and switch with Linux amd Solaris x86. I would be shocked if Solaris x86 offered half the hardware support that the Linux kernel supports
True, however remember that the target of the Java Desktop System is the enterprise desktop market, where the hardware is mostly standardized (i.e. Dell)
Also Sun has made substantial strides in both performance and hardware support in Solaris 10/AMD64 (which will run on newer Prescotts and Nocona Xeons), and the hardware support on x86 has been substantially improved (insider knowledge… the latest Solaris Express HCLs are quite out of date)
Those of you criticizing it are not aware of the current developments in Solaris 10 and its massively expanded hardware compatibility.
or capaple of running most OSS, and commercial software available for the PC.
It certainly will. It implements the Linux ABI through Janus, and ships with a Linux userspace including glibc, so it can run any Linux software.
Obviously Solaris is a very capable system for servers, but why you would want to run it on your desktop or laptop?
Sun had a choice to make: They had an enterprise caliber OS which provided an almost 1:1 feature parity with Microsoft (think Solaris LDAP management and Active Directory, smc/mmc) which ran sub-par on x86, and an enterprise desktop offering lacking many features available on the Windows side. They could either port the entire Solaris environment and related tools over to Linux, or they could improve the performance of their operating system on x86/AMD64.
With Solaris 10 you get:
* Solaris LDAP (as compared to Active Directory)
* Star Office (as compared to Office)
* Evolution (as compared to Outlook)
Now, throw in the Java Enterprise System and you get, for $100/employee:
* Sun Java System Messaging Server/Calendar Server (as compared to Exchange, and Exchange compatible)
* Solaris NFS fileservers on Sun ZFS or VxFS with the Veritas Volume Manager
* Support for large fiber channel arrays and QFS SANs
* Enterprise database support with Oracle on Solaris/SPARC
While also getting a Gnome desktop and all your favorite open source software and remaining Linux compatible.
The Java Enterprise System provides the best available transition from Microsoft to Unix environments, with full and robust Exchange compatibility through the Sun Java System Messaging Server/Calendar Server and Active Directory service and integration through Samba, while providing full and complete interoperability into the Unix environment through Evolution and Star Office.
It’s a complete, cohesive, and well integrated client/server solution with complete feature parity to and compatibility with Microsoft environments while at the same time providing support for Linux software and a large number of open source programs. No other enterprise package offers this, especially for $100/employee.
I think the annual fees are going to keep JDS from ever getting far outside of the corporate market, who in their right mind is going to want to pay Sun an annual fee for software when there are better alternatives that you only have to pay for once and from then on you can install as many times as you want on as many computers as the license you purchased will permit with as many users as you want.
I wouldn’t put up with annual fees from any company selling softare even if it was my favourite Linux distribution trying to pull off something like that. Its like renting out the operating system for an extended period of time, it won’t take long before the cost of these annual fees will outweigh the cost of simply purchasing an OEM copy of Windows with the computers or purchasing an easily affordable and well made Linux distribution such as Mandrake or SUSE.
A product as young as JDS on an operating system with less market share and drivers then most BSD or Linux distributions and with a rediculous annual fee system implemented isn’t going to impress any one I know.
Why do we seam to be getting more and more Fan Boy flames? As far as I knew this was site was about general OSs. If people want to be hyper pro their personal preferences there are lots of places for that sort of stuff.
Hi,
Hmmm, I’m not actually sure that $100 is that bad a deal – Bascule has already covered all the cool stuff you get, plus I’m assuming you get a pretty decent Sun Micro support plan (barring having to sign a stack of NDAs *grin*).
Besides, considering the TCO of Windows and co., and comparing it to the cost of RH Enterprise, it’s a sell =).
Bye,
Victor
luckily the “Now, if Sun would only drop the other shoe and deliver JDS for Windows on x86 … ” statement in the article had been ignored
I can’t see anything bad, or wrong with this. If they want Solaris x86 to gain market share as a desktop, then this is the only approach that makes sense.
I doubt I will be lining up to be a customer – as I am quite happy with my Linux machines, but it must be exciting for Sun reps. to be able to offer their customers something reasonably modern on the desktop again.
Seriously, with the quality of GNOME and their own OpenOffice suite etc. Sun would have to make some really, excruciatingly boneheaded moves not to see some JDS adoption.
I think the per-user licensing is a reasonable approach, and will be more palatable to managers than it would be to a ‘you can pry my custom-built kernel and idiosyncratic desktop setup from my cold dead hands’ type like myself.
Plus, its good to see Sun following through on their vision for Solaris, and its a good thing to have another option for x86 *NIX on the desktop. Its what looks to me like a competitive strategy.
Credit where credit is due, I think Sun are doing the right thing here.