I recently saw a demo of the Sun's Java Desktop system at the linux expo in New York. I was kind of impressed by the graphics, and I just wanted to know if anybody has used it and how do you rated? Is it better than Red Hat?

Thanks....

argh cucolin@. You cannot just come here, make us all curious and then leave without a link or a snapshot lol, just kidding. Well, I've found a good review about JDS:

http://www.madpenguin.org/Article891.html

here are some snapshots for the curious and lazy to read:

http://www.madpenguin.org/images/rev...launchmenu.png

http://www.madpenguin.org/images/rev...03/desktop.png

Well, I've not tried the OS, so I cannot judge much based on a single guy review. But taking the facts, not his personal points, and looking at the screenshots, JDS looks more like a Suse clone with a WindowsXP modified desktop using Gnome (but looks really professional though).

The problems are the usual. Lack of good media player (mplayer is available and rocks, why they don't use with JDS... I don't know). Another problem that I've noticed is that Sun tried as good as they could to make everything to be done using gui's. Many users might find it attractive, and generally, it is. The problem is, not 100% of the configuration tools can be done with gui under JDS. That will make some users nuts. I went nut with Mandrake, because they have a bunch of gui tools, but sometimes very deficients, so from time to time I had to use command line. I think they had to plan it better. Windows is successful because you don't have to run a command at the prompt, like ever (or almost). Slackware, my distro of choice, does everything through the command line, and was chosen by LQ and many other forums as the distro of the year.
When planning a distribution, you must to pick up a lane. Or you make it all gui's based, fully functional with extra eye candy, or you make it more text based. Doing something at the middle leads the user (both advanced and non-geeks) to rage, plus makes it look like an unfinished product.

I'm somewhat, a Sun fan. I'm willing to get an old Sparc anytime soon. I've just started with Solaris x86 and I'm enjoying it so far. My favorite programming language (when not coding, or ratter saying, trying to code OpenGL games) is Java. But JDS does not seem ready to fight at the market as a desktop environment, specially because it will enrage peoples and it will not make linux look good(for the ones who never heard of it...), for the reasons above...
Well, that's what I think. Without grabbing the CD's and running it myself, taking a closer look how customizable it is, package manager and compiling, I won't say anything more...

I had a play about with it and I wasn't really that impressed. One of the UK Linux Magazines had a morphix-JDS CD cover-mounted. The way I saw it was a basic Gnome setup (slight adaptations, but nothing really major). The disc included StarOffice (Writer, Calc & Impress only) and a few JAVA apps, but nothing special. As I said, I didn't think it was anything special.

£0.02

Does anybody else agree that the system requirements are a little too high as well?

# PC with a Pentium III 600MHz processor, or compatible system
# 6GB free hard drive space
# 256MB of RAM

I could run WinXP, which is also heavy as hell in a PII - 350MHz very well, with a smaller amount of space (about 1.5 gigas I think). I do, agree that in some cases, it's necessary to have a good PC, specially for video playback/gaming, but since JDS apparently lacks video playback/gaming, it's a little too high, isn't it?. Perhaps it's because they fill JDS up with Java applications, which are not that fast in my humble Java-programmer-wannabe opinion...

I had to resurrect this thread. Since this JSD is basically a Suse modified distribution, would I take that YasT works normally and that it should have the same hardware support as Suse has and that nvidia cards would work with that? Just wondering... if anyone knows, please lemme know

Thanks

Well, I've been "googling" all day and found out that you can install nvidia with Sun Java Desktop through the update system only. Using nvidia drivers will return an unknown kernel error...

Hmmm, shouldn't this thread be on general by the way? It has nothing to do with Solaris, and if it had to do with a Linux distro, it should be Suse

I've just been going through some old threads (ok, so not that old) and thought I'd chip in again. I know this is about Sun JDS, but I thought I'd share this: I had a play with Looking Glass a few weeks ago (Linux User & Developer Expo, London) and I have to admit... I wasn't impressed. Sure, the underlying processes seem quite funky, but the overall emphasis of LG seemed to be a bit too much into the annoying gimmicky things that look good but don't do much. For example, a fairly good feature was the ability to flip any window or dialogue over and write on the back of it, "post-it" style. A very bad feature was that the background image moved subtley with every mouse move - I can see people getting headaches from that! According to the Sun guys at the stand, this feature would probably not be optional - it is on, and that is that. One of the things I found interesting, however, is that it is (apparently) building on the JDS thing by actually having the X client written in Java and utilising Java's 3D extensions, so it will be a truer Java Desktop System. Still didn't like it though. Give me minimalism!

I am personally a great Fan of JDS and I think Sun has come a long way to polish it up. But instead of me bragging on about again I’ll just point you to a article that has my point of view on it. (For whatever it’s worth)
http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT2538828150.html

Ricardo W.

Hey gcclinux!!!

Been reading a couple of your posts on Sun's forum and, thanks to you, I've got my nvidia drivers installed in JDS Thanks.

By the way, I've changed my mind when installing JDS for the... hmmm, 4th or 5th time and I also think it's pretty good. A few bugs during the installation and a couple of silly applications as Java media player(xmms is so much cooler, but they had to include some Java Aplications to justify the name, didn't they ) prevents this distro from being great. I loved what they did with Gnome though. I always loved Gnome the best, but since I've switched to SuSE, gnome seems pretty broken over there, no matter how time and effort I put onto it....

Well, I'm on JDS 1 now writing this message and fixing a few problems with Pygame and FULLSCREEN mode, and zsnes running really choppy. Well, it's a thumbs up distribution, a bit pricey, a bit buggy, but so were all distros I've tried around .

Nice job from SuSE, ops, Sun, with lots of room for improvement.

Regards!

Moved: This thread is more suitable in JDS and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

These are fun posts. I like the attitude of the people here. It's refreshing.

Hey guys, Lindows, Xandros, Conectiva, TurboLinux, SuSE, Mandrake, Progeny and on and on are based on previous distributions - Red Hat and Debian mostly.

So is JDS. It's a custom build of SuSE. It uses Yast (which is open sourced now).

No one has built a desktop as nice and SuSE didn't.

I like it.

Also, if you want extra stuff visit our downloads at http://jdshelp.org

This is such a postive constructive thread.

I like minimalism, too, like Thymox said; but Looking Glass is just under construction and is already attracting some interesting people who are rethinking the "desktop" metaphor. What you see today does not reflect the interesting stuff that J3D will inspire shortly down the road.

Also, please keep in mind that Looking Glass as a whole is targeted as a JDS option.

The other thing... I observe this group is still quite sophisticated and some of the shortcomings people see with Sun's work with GNOME and Java apps come from us, here, being NOT THE TARGET AUDIENCE for JDS. Sun has targeted GUI users (Windows users). The bright thing about that is that GUI people can do their thing, but we have powerful Linux underneath to do mostly whatever we want. Support with RPM's at JDShelp makes it so.

-Sam