What do you think of the JDS?
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Showing messages 1 through 14 of 14.

• Where's the Java?
  2004-10-15 23:03:33  CraigBuchek [Reply | View]
  
  

  I found this article somewhat lacking. I don't feel that it told me what's so Java about JDS, but made excuses for Sun instead. I also feel that the author is mis-interpreting the community's reaction.

  
  

  I think the biggest excuse-making is regarding the Java name. The article explains that to understand the branding, you have to know a lot about the product, all of Sun's other products, and Sun's stategy. Which is the exact opposite of what branding is all about. A brand is supposed to tell me something about a product without having to do any research. To most of us, the Java brand indicates association with the Java programming language and VM. JDS has a lot of "Linux-ness", but we don't see much more Java here than most other OSes. That's what the community is complaining about -- that JDS doesn't meet our expectations of the "Java-ness" implied by the name. And this article hasn't convinced us otherwise.

  
  

  For Sun to put Java in front of every product name doesn't make sense -- unless they're planning on spinning off the software division into a separate company (something a few folks have surmised.) They already put Sun in front of every name. It's a lot like when Microsoft put the .NET tag in front of everything. It made it difficult to understand what .NET meant. A whole bunch of things got lumped together -- Passport, web services, the VM, and the framework. They were even going to tag Windows Server 2003 with the .NET brand, and perhaps Office. Fortunately, the brand only "stuck" to the VM and the associated framework. In the interim, the security problems with Passport made all the other pieces look bad by association.

  
  

  The rest of the article tries to explain Sun's role as a distribution vendor. It tries to make excuses for including commercial software and not being cutting edge. So? That's what we expect from enterprise Linux distros. There isn't much new territory here. Red Hat and SuSE and many others have been doing this for years. Most of us are not only familiar with these trade-offs, but comfortable with them. We know that if GNU/Linux is to be taken seriously by corporations, companies will need to build on the Open Source core. (At least for the time being -- in the end Debian will probably do to other Linux's what Linux is doing to other OSes. But vendors will still be needed to provide support and indemnity.)

  
  

  In the end, Sun took an existing SuSE Linux enterprise distribtuion, added a few things, and put the Java brand name on it. I hope it does well. If Sun does a good job of selling it to corporations and supporting it, then we'll all have benefited. But to think that this is something special is a mistake.

• Another Linux Not A Bad Thing-- But...
  2004-10-08 13:28:49  glenpepicelli [Reply | View]
  
  
  I don't see another linux as definatly bad for Linux in general. However, if Sun makes their Linux wildly different in some way than there is a problem. They might take a page out of the Microsoft book and write tons of well received but non-standard object libraries for it. Perhaps it will just be so off the standard-- yes there is a sort of standard-- that it will be hard to recompile software for it. (I am suggesting they may do this intentionally).
  
  
  The Author seems to be suggesting that open source developers don't care about meeting real business needs. This is totally false-- in most cases anyway. Developers want their software to be widely used and a sucess. They may not actually be on the phone with CIOs kissing up and asking "what do you want?" There is definatly a different culture. Open source developers have more creative freedom to do what they think is best. Some of them pretty much make mainstream stuff like the Eclipse IDE. Your boss isn't going to look at Eclipse and say "what the *$%#! is that?" On the other hand, if you install XEmacs you might find yourself in your bosses office trying to explain why you need a lisp system attached to your editor. It doesn't mean the developers of XEmacs think their software is pointless. It isn't it's just different. Or as your boss would say a new pro-active oriented paradym.
• Another Linux Not A Bad Thing-- But...
  2004-10-11 04:06:12  jwenting [Reply | View]
  
  
  most open source developers want their products widely used but don't want to take the steps needed to get people to use them.
  Instead of making their applications such that they are useful they bludgeon the population (who couldn't care less most of them and the rest are similar to those authors) with religious/political propaganda about how their application is superior to anything else for the simple fact that it's open source.
  
  Maybe if those people would get out of their ivory tower for a bit they'd notice that real users (rather than the few OS zealots they constantly hang out with on /. and similar sites) don't care one iota about the religious purity of a license model.
  They care about ease of use, return on investment, total cost of ownership and product stability (not just technical but also the question if the product will be in active maintenance 5 years from now let alone 5 months).
  
  Sun attempts to give some of that with their distribution, effectively placing their brand name (and with that endorsement of trust) on it might give people who don't want to have to deal with those religious zealots a central place to look for support.
  
  But apparently such reasoning is lost on you as it has been lost on the linux zealots for the last 10 years or so.

• Hardened? Integrated?
  2004-10-08 09:28:24  Sandsloth [Reply | View]
  
  
  "Hardened" and "Desktop System" are oxymorons. Using older software and careful design does not make for a "hardened" system.
  
  I also resent Slackware Linux being grouped in with Fedora Linux. Slackware Linux is a slow-moving, carefully-built distribution built to be the most Unix-like Linux. Slackware is also the oldest Linux distribution, its team having some 10 years of experience in maintaining the Slackware system (which has legendary stability). It's design is impeccable, and I have never used a more stable system.
  
  Fedora, on the other hand, is Red Hat's gift to the Open Source world - a beta version of Red Hat Linux. A good example of the way that Red Hat cares about the OSS community is when Fedora shipped with a buggy bootloader that made other operating systems unbootable. Would you ever find that in Slackware? Never, so please remember not to group these two distributions together.
  
  Of course a system can be integrated when it does not even use the proper names of the applications that it contains. Sun Microsystems basically uses code that took years to develop and strips it of its identity (and thus the credit given to the hard-working group of programmers that spent so much time developing it).
  
  JDS may be in use on Sun Opteron workstations, but I have yet to see it integrate the sort of server tools and management capabilities to migrate it away from anything but a simple desktop environment for the average user. Until then, in my mind it will simply be a small desktop distribution that does not warrant the serious consideration that can be given to SuSe and RHEL (especially now that both are being ported to more powerful architectures).
  
  Until Sun gets serious about supporting OSS instead of just leeching without giving back anything (much less credit), I will never give JDS a consideration. I will stick with more secure, stable, and mature Linux distributions rather than Sun's latest pretty-looking dumbed-down desktop system.
• Hardened? Integrated?
  2004-10-18 18:05:24  gdriggs [Reply | View]
  
  
  Just to clarify, Slackware is the oldest, currently developed Linux dist. There are some that predate it that are no longer maintained, including Ygdrassil IIRC. As for your choice to boycott JDS, that's certainly yours to make. But while you're at it, you might also consider never purchasing Novell's SUSE Linux Desktop. It's what JDS is built on which is in turn based on SUSE 8.1. You can confirm this by comparing the versions of glibc (2.2.5) and Linux kernel used (2.4.19) in all three distributions. As for the server and management tools you're speaking of, what relevance do they have for a desktop OS? JDS has management tools but they're designed for managed entire LANs of desktops, not for services running on each host. I think your mention of enterprise Linux distributions has no bearing on the discussion of desktops.
• Enterprise?
  2004-10-18 18:15:09  gdriggs [Reply | View]
  
  
  I suppose I should do my own clarifying... I think you're confusing enterprise desktop OSs with enterprise server OSs. It's the equivalent of claiming that Windows 2003 Server is worse or better than Windows XP Pro for deploying on serveral hundred, thousand, or ten thousand desktops. Sun JDS is an enterprise desktop OS. Sun Solaris is an enterprise server OS. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is an enterprise server OS. Red Hat's Fedora is a desktop OS. SUSE Linux desktop is an enterprise desktop OS. SUSE Enterprise Server 9 is self explanatory. SUSE Linux Pro and Personal are desktop OSs but not enterprise desktop OSs. Mac OS Apple is not the same as Mac OS Orange.

• Sun like branding...
  2004-10-08 06:43:47  rev-lee [Reply | View]
  
  
  Adding the Java brand to their distribution is similar to what happened when Sun acquired Forte' Software. Suddenly all of Sun's development tools, such as Fortran compilers, became Forte' development tools. They take a brand known for quality or acceptance and apply it to a range products to increase the auro of respectability for all of the products.

• Comments on Linux and Java on the desktop
  2004-10-08 00:28:12  scottwalters1 [Reply | View]
  
  
  I take objection to this article for all the same reasons I've objected to JDS and Sun's understanding of open source - none of which are which are what you accused me of. Company PR departments have a way of taking critisms and repeating it back polarized into accusations so bad they couldn't possibly be true and ambaguous comments that can easily be shown not to be a complaint at all, and lo, magically, there are no valid objections! This is spinning, and us Open Source people, being able to successfully avoid it to such a degree as we have, don't fail to notice it.
  
  
  First, lots of companies are adapting Linux for the corporate desktop, RedHat not the least of them. We like RedHat because they say what they mean and they mean what they say. We're seldom left guessing, and never for long. IBM people are suspicious of yet, as well they should be, but IBM has done a huge amount of work. I don't see Sun Linux commercials on TV. You might pat yourself on the back for "integrating everything", and a lot of companies have done a lot of integrating in the past, but guess what, people like me do too. We go down to client sites, create custom Knoppix based distributions with customized start menus and file associations, with Microsoft Windows software living in /home/knoppix/.wine/c_drive, stuck on the start menu, ready to go - for those few applications they can't live without. I call this a days work, not a valuable, exclusive service to all Linux kind. Linux can live without me and it can live without you. Hundreds of "system intergrators" have died through the 80's and the resurgance in the 90's was... limited. MSCE's took over this field.
  
  
  
  Second, Sun likes to play second fiddle. This gets back to no Sun Linux commercials on TV. Fine, let the unwashed masses go on living with no evidence whatsoever that no operating systems besides Microsoft Windows and MacOSX exist. You wouldn't believe how many computer owns I've had to explain to "yes, your PC can run other operating systems". As long as no one drops the hint, they're going to go on thinking this, and this just makes it harder to do what you're trying to do. But you don't care. You're happy to play second fiddle. When Netscape squaked at you for competing with them with HotJava 1.3 on the Java-on-the-web front after they licensed your tech, you castrated HotJava into something worthless except as a component. After Microsoft defanged Netscape, boy did you look dumb.
  
  
  
  Third, actions speak louder than words. Remember when you refused to give up technical information needed to port Linux to the Sparc 64 architecture, making snide remarks all the while about how Linux "isn't ready" for 64 bit computing, and high performance applications demand Solaris, and as independent reverse engineering progressed, you hinted at sueing? Well, maybe you didn't work in that department and the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, but from out here, you're all one big company, and it doesn't look nearly as rosy as it might in your department. SGI ported Linux willingly. SGI added a lot of things they developed to Linux - and they're taking heat from SCO just like IBM is. When SCO approached you - before they approached IBM - you gave them hundreds of thousands of dollars and agreed not to add anything from Solaris to Linux. Remember? I do. Slashdot is a top 20 news site. It pushes a hell of a lot more traffic than sun.com does. You're spinning against the stream here.
  
  
  
  I realize Sun's been lost for a market for a while, and there's the temptation to go soft - "oh, Sun, they should just watch their ass real close cuz someones gunna put them out of their misery" - people say things to this affect. If you acted like the people who liked you well enough to own your hardware were the coolest people on Earth, you wouldn't be in this mess. Last time a client needed big iron for a database server guess who I bought it from. SGI. That's right. Even though their reputation as the biggest coke-heads in California with greedy management from hell is entirely founded. (Unix newbies out there: it's well known that California Unix venders encouraged their employees to take cocain to put in those long hours - Sun has this reputation too but SGI is legendary). Maybe you buy a crummy $800 PC from a store down the road and expect betrayal, but you don't drop $265,000 and take that kind of treatment. I know most people buy hardware out of momemtum and thusout of ignornace, but inertia comes from somewhere, and you've lost it. Remember: it isn't about what you want your customers to do, it's about what your customers want. The only thing you should draw the line at is giving away hardware someone is willing to pay for. Your best successes were lowing the prices of the Ultras, getting all sorts of people and research departments running them on the desktop. People like Unix. It sells itself. We're sick of crummy white label PC hardware, but most of us are afraid of RISC boxes because we've never been able to touch them because they're too expensive. If you can't make a Sparc and sell it new for under $1,500, you'll continue to fade away - and I'm not talking about gimped out thin clients. I want to order this thing on your website, and through better online computer retailers without having to give my cell number to some damn Sun reseller who calls me in the middle of my sleep cycle and acts coy. Apples took a big hit when they stopped putting Macs in schools at any cost. It took years, but things slowly started leaning towards Microsoft. Consdering the care Windows needs to be handled with and how utterly useless it is when it's locked down, this blows my mind. Give the poor kids Speak 'n Spells why don't they. Take a hint from Google: make everyone work on their own "fun" projects for 10% of their time. The 3D window manager is the best thing you've shown us for years. Get computers out there - GNU is already supporting your processor for you - all you have to do is design and fab them. Get them in peoples hands. Get a new generation of Linux enthuasits excited about Sparc hardware (and if you're just selling PC's, you're just another white box). Make it a friendly environment to device driver authors, programmers, hackers, amature sysadmins, college researchers, and when they get jobs in the real world, they'll remember their safe haven and it take with them. Problem is, it'll take close to 6 years - just like the hobbyists-come-pro Linux movement. You can do!
  
  
  
  -scott
  
• Comments on Linux and Java on the desktop
  2004-10-08 15:04:11  Scorpionfish [Reply | View]
  
  
  If there is anyone snorting cocaine, your rant makes it appears that it is you.
  
  I have been using Java in Mandrake (and a few other distros, including Slackware, Corel, RedHat, and Suse) for about 8 years now.
  
  In my opinion Sun has contributed to OpenSource immensely by providing a new Language and now a new distro for Linux users to choose from. I personally have gained considerably from using Java without ever paying Sun a dime (well not quite true I did purchase a Java tutorial tool from them once). Sun continues to work with the OpenSource community (such as Blackdown Linux, the first port of Java to Linux for some time via its own community process). I say let each company have a Linux policy and let consumers choose those which best meet their needs. Not everyone has the same requirements, objectives, or level of experience.
  
  While slashing and burning your adversaries is a tried and true human tradition, it isn't the only one and it hardly provides any tangible comparative evidence that what is offered as an alternative is any better.
  
  I personally feel that Sun's performance on contributing to OpenSource is far better than most companies, perhaps a few OpenSource ones included, despite a lot of hot air that one reads on the net. Perhaps this is the price Scott McNeeley must pay for being so bombastic toward M$ over the many years. Perhaps you might want to contribute your critical thoughts to improve the process rather than carping on line.
  
  Accusing Sun for wanting to make money is a pretty lame excuse for a crime in our Capitalist society. The fact that they don't advertise much on TV is that 1) they lost a bunch of money and have to use what they have left on their priorities (haven't we all at some point) and 2) the average TV viewer is hardly likely to know or care about Java or Linux or IT for that matter (just look at the polls, folks are actually voting for politicians who cut subsidies for high tech education and high tech jobs and promote the out-sourcing of those that are left). Why should Sun pay good money to reach these misfits?
  
  I suspect that much anti-Sun rhetoric is more about not liking increased competition rather than specific beefs about Sun's products, most of which the complainers among us don't seem to use anyway.
  
  If Sun can show me a Linux desktop that can better integrate Java, with its immense cross-platform capability, and a Linux desktop GUI that provides improved productivity to the user, I will give it a good looking over. In the meantime, I'll continue to use Mandrake (now at version 10) as my preferred distro.
  
  Open Source is about the freedom to make choices.
  
  
• Comments on Linux and Java on the desktop
  2004-10-08 02:48:43  sidboyce [Reply | View]
  
  
  Sun touches Linux with on hand over the nose and with two fingers, while looking the other way. The strategy is to use Linux as a necessary evil for now while they work towards developing a Solaris equivalent running MS Office. We will see Sun eventually replacing their in-house Linux desktops with SPARC/Solaris, then likewise they will phase out their so-called JDS and seemlessly convert their JDS customer base, or if Ballmer doles out sufficient cash to them, plug Microsoft desktop as the only viable one. Evident to anyone who follows the recent pronouncements of McNealy and Swartz. Sun has no long term interest in Linux, period. The name Java instead of Linux outlines their strategy/panic to get them noticed once again.

• Stable == predictable
  2004-10-08 00:05:30  ionrock [Reply | View]
  
  
  I think "enterprise" customers do not necessarily want stability as much as they want to know what to expect from their software. If there is a bug with a simple work around that works reliably then an enterprise customer is fine with it. This then makes JDS not a superior product, but merely a predictable one. This article seems to give Sun too much credit for JDS at the expense of other very good distros. Just because it is not the best for the enterprise doesn't mean that it is not as stable, featureful or usable. It is only possibly less predictable.

• Debian, older!=stable
  2004-10-07 14:10:55  eeanm [Reply | View]
  
  
  When did Debian have new software? What world does this guy live on? And who is calling it "Popular Linux" exactly?
  
  Also, older does not mean more stable. The opposite has been my experience with trying to get the old software on Debian (like its default dhcp client) to work compared to Gentoo. Gaim 0.70 is an example of that, I'm sure that's too old for several protocols. RealPlayer 8, with its own weird widget set, is less stable and harder to use then RealPlayer 10 which uses GTK 2.
  
  I suppose I wouldn't mind Sun tossing the brandname Java onto everything, if it wasn't already a name for a programming language and the common practice is to tack on program language names when the software is /written/ in that language. Though ever since Netscape made JavaScript its been an abused name, so I guess I don't really care.
• Debian, older!=stable
  2004-10-07 18:46:21  adrianus [Reply | View]
  
  
  "older does not mean more stable."
  To be more precise to my opinion "older does not always mean more stable" but older program has more chances and potential to be more stable because most bug should already be found and hopefully fixed. But that depends on the time and effort the maintainer has.
  For example to my experience firefox 0.9.x is more stable than firefox 1.0PR.
  I have no experience with Debian (heard many good things about it) but I notice that Redhat Enterprise (which supposedly more stable) is not using newer version of packages like say Fedora Core. I think that was the reason why Sun choose the older version.
  Admittedly newer program has new feature that older program don't have. Gaim 0.70 maybe already can be called stable, but Yahoo's decision to alter its protocol to make other client difficult to connect to it force user of gaim to get newer versions.
  
  The brandname admittedly annoys me in the beginning, not because it is a community property (I think Sun owns "Java" brand name), but the misleading effect it have to people already know "Java" as a language name. I just accept it later knowing if JDS itself become more popular the occurence of misunderstanding will become less and later it will more have Java applications afterall.
• Debian, older!=stable
  2004-10-07 22:51:52  eeanm [Reply | View]
  
  
  That could be your experience with Firefox, but the difference between Firefox 1.0PR and 0.9.x is primarly that 1.0PR has more bugs fixed. (I personally found them both to be stable, I suspect in your case its Firefox balking on using a configuration created from an earlier version because I've had this problem, but thats neither here nor there.)
  
  I guess there's two uses for the word stable. Stable as in unchanging. Stable as in less likely for a program to crash. The former doesn't mean you release a distro with old software, it means you release a distro and maintain it (security updates) for several years, perhaps with a longer update cycle. And its the former that enterprises want. And as I already stated a program being older doesn't magically mean its going to crash less, certainly when talking about minor revisions (like the difference between 0.7 and 1.0 of Gaim) newer is better.