Published at LXer:

In 2003, Sun Microsystems released the Sun Java Desktop System, a Linux operating system (based on SuSe Linux - a Novell company) with the look and feel of Windows, bundled with the StarOffice suite, a productivity suite comparable to Microsoft's Office. Later that year, Sun announced that it had struck a deal with the China Standard Software Company, a consortium of Chinese tech companies supported by the government, to install between half a million and million installs of the JDS on Chinese computers, making it the largest Linux OS install base in the world. The end goal of that project would see some 500 million installs, which would be a remarkable coup for Sun. The JDS is essentially sold at the rate of $100 per employee per year, or half for licensed users of the Sun Java Enterprise System. With all the interest in the OS and office productivity suite package, someone had to come up with a book to take IT enthusiasts along for the ride. O'Reilly Media's Exploring the JDS Linux Desktop, by Tom Adelstein and Sam Hiser, is an ideal introduction for the novice to more advanced user, especially since it is packaged with a live CD-ROM that lets you run the OS from RAM without installing it on your computer. The book is clearly designed for getting people up and running on JDS fast, so while it will be of great interest to hobbyists and employees who have been switched over, it's not designed to make the reader a systems engineer or serious administrator. It's also one of the few JDS books that I've found on Amazon.com.

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