[geeks] Sun JDS screenshots

Scott Howard scott at doc.net.au
Sun Nov 21 23:03:37 CST 2004


On Sun, Nov 21, 2004 at 04:46:17PM -0600, Bill Bradford wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 21, 2004 at 04:08:57PM -0600, Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:
> > I've always wondered why they called it the "Java Desktop".  Aside from
> 
> Its too much branding gone mad.  They should have just called it the 
> "Sun Linux Desktop".  Otherwise people will think its Java-based.  It's
> not - its SuSe based.

No, JDS is not Linux.  Unfortunately Marketing has done a great job
of consfusing everyone here.

JDS is the "desktop". The underlying OS is, technically, unimportant.
Initially JDS was only available based on Linux (SuSE) and unfortunately
JDS became pretty much known as Sun's Linux distribution, however there
are now version of JDS running on Solaris 9 (internal to Sun only, and I
don't think it'll ever be released) and Solaris 10 (SPARC and Linux), as
well as the Linux version.

The whole idea is that you can move backwards and forwards between a
SPARC box running Solaris, an x86/AMD running Solaris, and an x86/AMD
running Linux without having the desktop change. Throw in SunRay Server
on both Linux and SPARC (so the machine running the desktop might be a
physical machine or a SunRay without you knowing/caring).

So JDS isn't Linux - even if your Sun salesman tells you it is :(

  Scott.
  (Currently on a SunRay running JDS on a SPARC machine).



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