I was scrolling through LQ and found this version of Linux. What kind of distrobution is JDS. I have been reading through various distributions, and something supported by Sun seems to show some promise. My real need for running Linux is to use it for a development platform. I am learning Java at the moment, and was hoping this might have some straight forward tools for working with. I will appreciate any informaton about this version, thank's.

You can find out more about JDS Linux at http://www.sun.com/software/javadesk...m/ds/index.xml. It's based on GNOME 2.6 running on top of SuSE Enterprise Linux 1.0, with a few bits customised by Sun. It's designed to be one of the simpler Linux distros out there, so you won't find 28 different web browsers and mail clients cluttering up your menus... in particular, it should look quite familiar if you're used to using Windows. It comes with Java SDK pre-installed (I think possibly only 1.4, though, as it's a couple of years old now). I forget if that version came with the NetBeans IDE pre-installed too.

The main drawbacks are that it's not free to download (although you do get full support from Sun for your money), and perhaps more importantly, Sun have recently switched their desktop focus back to JDS on Solaris. So there won't be any significant updates to JDS on Linux for the forseeable future, which is why it's gone a bit quiet in here (Which is a pity, as the latest version had already gone through a beta cycle and was looking good).

Thanks, I appreciate the information. After reading your post, it seems my best option is to find something else, and wait for Sun to resupport Linux. To be honest, I'm not sure I would purchase another version, not unless more people started working with Linux. Thanks for your post.

Check out the guys at GCC Linux, seeing as I am a new member here I cannot post the link directly, but search for "GccLinux Desktop" and you should hit the site, then go to the forums.
These guys were doing independant development of JDS applications and are now looking at developing their own distro, based (I think) on JDS.
Yes, JDS did come with some development tools, including NetBeans and Java Studio, but quite old versions.
Cheers, Peter.