Hi all,
I use Debian. I know that Java is an interpeted language, I cannot create executables,I must have the Java Virtual Machine. Now, is the Sun linux distro written in Java? But how? If yes, then it should be possible to write an os in Java, but as far as I know, this is impossible! Plz Help!

no,it's just a name.JDS and JVM are two different products from the same company." Java Desktop System is based on the SuSE Linux Desktop"
http://www.sun.com/software/javadesktopsystem/faq.xml

Thanks!

This is partially wrong, java is a compiled language, as javac command name suggests.
It is however true that it doesn't compiles into Linux, Solaris or Windows executables, but in binary files, executable only by a virtual machine, the JVM.

If java had been really an interpreted language, then the way to launch an application would have been something likewhich is obviously not the case, java is expecting a class, not source code.

JDS is a graphic environment that is not tied to Linux.
It is based on gnome, with the addition of several Sun customizations and specific products and developments. It includes Sun Java environment, one of the reasons for its name I presume.

JDS 1 was indeed released on top of Suse Linux, as piscikeeper said, but this linux distro wasn't really part of it. For example there is a JDS 1 live demo CD based on knoppix, which itself has its roots on debian.

Later JDS releases were made available on top of Solaris, and it is in fact now the default Solaris 10 graphic environment, confirming JDS is not Sun Linux distro, but (one of) Sun's graphic middleware(s).

It is not impossible, making the virtual machine real is "just" what is needed.
Chips like ultraJava and picoJava certainly did used to make that happen, but no implementation was ever made available to the public, as far as I know.

Alternatively, there used to be also a project to have an O/S with many parts written in Java, JavaOS, but still with parts of it written in a lower lever language (presumabily C and assembler) to be able to run on non java bytecode aware CPUs.

The current java direction is not following these ways, Java 5 optimizations demonstrates there is no need for a dedicated CPU architecture or dedicated O/S to reach high performance with Java.

Actually there is a project called jnode, http://www.jnode.org/, "a simple to use & install Java operating system". I don't know if it is same thing that jlliagre was speaking of.

Even this is partially wrong, as nowadays "gcj" is in existance, which compiles java-sources as well as java-bytecode to native executables (no GUI support iirc).

As a (imho) nice pun they call it "ahead-of-time Java compiler".
See the GCJ website.

>This is partially wrong, java is a compiled language, as javac command name suggests.

well, but when you say still java is an interpreter!

java is indeed an interpreter, but it doesn't interpret Java code but JVM bytecode, you can compile several languages in JVM bytecode, including java, which is so still a compiled language.
Nowadays, java (i.e. the JVM) is converting on the fly bytecode to native code, so even this "interpreted language" claim is fading, and is usually faster than gcj generated code anyway.