The Bad

There are a few problems with the distro as explained below, but I had one big problem and one big gripe with this distro:

The biggest problem:
JDS would not work with my network card on my second test installation (it worked fine on my first test PC with a 3Com card). My network card is supported by Linux, in fact I have 4 more Linux distros on that AthlonXP machine which all work great. I tried to find out what's up with it, and I noticed that the module for RealTek 8139 is loaded (onboard NIC on a VIA chipset mobo), that the configuration on Yast2 is perfectly right, the connector is fine, it is able to ping itself by IP (10.0.0.9) but it couldn't reach any other PC on our network, or the internet. That was obviously a driver bug, and so I did my homework and tried to search on Google for similar problems (with the help of an "ifup eth0" error I was getting). Bingo! SuSE has this bug on its kernels for almost a year now (this happens on specific revisions of the RT8139). In fact it seems to be a SuSE-only bug and Sun has inherited for its distro too now it seems. There is no resolution for this bug but to recompile your kernel manually. I downloaded the latest 2.4.23 and used Sun's .config file, compilation went well, but on reboot I was getting a kernel panic that could not mount the rootfs because the kernel could not find the reiserfs module, while its .o file was in the right place (for some reason Sun's default .config compiles it as module, even if the default fs is ReiserFS on Yast2). Giving it one last shot later, loading the default .config from my Slackware and then recompiling ALSA 0.9.8, had me up and running on JDS on that AthlonXP machine. I believe that both Sun and SuSE should look into this 8138too.o bug more carefully.

The biggest gripe:
It does not include KDE support. I am not talking about including KDE as an alternative DE to Gnome, because Sun is committed on Gnome and it does make product-sense to only provide a single supported D. However, by not including the kdelibs and a newer Qt package, it rules out the ease of installing more Linux applications. Let's face it, at least 50-60% of the Linux GUI software today is written for the Qt toolkit and the KDE libs, for one or the other reason that I won't explain here. By not including KDE support, Sun immediately shred away the hopes of users to install more software! There is no burning application coming with the distro for example (except the very plain burn:/// Nautilus VFS module). There are 2-3 third party Gnome GTK+ 1.x burning apps out there but they are outdated, difficult to use and ugly, while the KDE-based K3B is the one app on Linux that is powerful and pretty easy to use and that even does DVD burning too. There are other very good reasons for users to need KDE/Qt functionality (KStars, KDevelop, TheKompany apps etc), and JDS doesn't make that easy. There is the ancient Qt 3.1.1 installed by default, but *only* because it is a dependency on Yast2 tools and not for other reasons! Manually installing a newer Qt and KDE on the default locations might break Yast2 and installing Qt elsewhere can be tricky, so that is not a good option either. I believe that Sun has tremendously limited their OS by removing KDE application functionality.

Other Annoyances:
Sun has designed its own theme, named BluePrint. The theme is nothing extraordinary, it has some interesting widget implementations (e.g. the rounded input boxes, the sliders etc) while other parts of it are absolutely hideous, e.g. the default gray color and the window manager. The window manager design is just as ugly as it can go plus it is not practical (it is almost impossible to see the buttons of an unfocused window). The default gray application background color makes the whole OS feel oh-so-Win95 that it isn't even funny. I had to go to themes and change my theme to the light gray/white version of the same theme, in order to make the desktop feel more welcome. And if that wasn't enough, the BluePrint theme is slow. Switching to the Default Gnome theme it gives me the same level of Fedora's speed, but with it, it is just slow on the AthlonXP 1.4 GHz.

Everyone's bitching on Gnome for not having a menu editor, but under JDS things are worse than usual. Normally what you do is go to start-here:/// and the Applications are listed there, and then by using these entries as normal shortcuts you can edit your gnome menu. But on JDS, start-here:/// does not work. It does not display anything when called, and so there is no easy way to edit the JDS menu. And yes, there is a good reason why someone would want to do this, because both Epiphany and Real Player are included by default in the installation and they don't have entries at all on the menu! I was really surprised that Sun forgot Real Player off their menu because they did such a big noise about it a few weeks ago and did a press release about it too.

Sun has (deliberately, because of license issues?) left out of Gaim the Gadu-Gadu and MSN plugins. The MSN plugin could be quite a blow for offices as many companies use it as their main IM software (I know my previous company in UK used to). On other desktop software disappointments count the Totem-gstreamer inability to play a simple .mpg video (the Fanimatrix trailer in particular, 14 MB), while Totem plays it fine on both my Fedora and Slackware.

The other problem I stumbled upon is Samba. I shared via Samba a folder on my Mac OS X Panther machine (newly acquired dual PowerMac G4) and tried to get connected to it via the Network Places panel on Nautilus (which creates shortcuts) and via directly typing smb://10.0.0.12/eugenia/ on Nautilus' URL bar. The first way will crash Nautilus and the second will just not connect. Other Linux distros have other problems with the samba VFS module for Nautilus, so one thing is for sure: the smb VFS module desperately needs fixing at many levels. Using smbmount from the command line works perfectly. The samba version used by JDS is 2.2.x.

Java applications are downright ugly and out of place, no matter if this distro is called "Java Desktop System" or not. I know that Sun is working on a way for Java to use GTK+ themes, but except some Sun Java apps no one else is using the technology and so even the included Java apps don't feel integrated to the rest of the environment. But that's all well known, here is the worst part. Check the screenshot, these are five Java apps all from the /Extras/Java Applications/ menu. ALL five of them are using different theming/widget set (only the Java Media Player of the five uses the GTK+ engine)! It is one thing to have Java apps not look like the Gnome apps, but having 5 java apps and all look different from each other, well, it is too much for anyone to bear. Additionally, all the SuSE setting GUI panels are based on Qt, and so these look even more different. It is like torture.

More over, I completely fail to see the point of advertising the fact in the /Extra menu that these apps are "Java Applications" (or was that a warning?). The user should not care if these apps were Java or GTK+ or Qt, these are implementation details that should be absolutely transparent to the desktop user.

Mozilla would crash consistently when clicking to download RPMs, e.g. here (because of the Real Player plugin, but this doesn't happen on my Slackware with Real also installed). Another bug I found was with gThumb. Turning on the "Image Preview", would do nothing. Also for those who asked me via email yesterday, SuSE's RPMs don't seem to work with JDS. There are unsatisfied dependencies on libc, libcrypto, ssl etc.

Lastly, the overall speed of the OS won't win any awards. All in all, I found it more slugish than Fedora (when using the default Blueprint theme) and with much worse mouse movements (Fedora has special kernel support for that) but with better multitasking than Fedora at very specific places (Fedora's RedHat menu stalls some times and doesn't open for a few seconds). My Slackware 9.1 (also on the same AthlonXP machine but on a slower, Samsung, drive) beats both of them on desktop performance noticeably while using Gnome 2.4.x.

Conclusion

It is important to remember that this desktop system is meant for the enterprise and corporate desktops and not for home desktops. JDS and its accompanied applications are certainly very stable once up and running and it has good support options plus its price is at very good levels and includes the whole Star Office 7 deal. It is certainly a good alternative to MS Windows for corporate usage, however it does have its problems as you saw above. Some admins might dislike the fact that installing KDE support manually is too much work and it might break things. However, compared to Windows XP, JDS does come with a good price, plus Star Office 7 immediately adds a great value to the package.

Sun told me a few months ago that they see Microsoft as their main competitor for this particular product, but I also see Red Hat and SuSE as major competitors as they will try to take on the same corporate customers. Luckily for Sun, Red Hat's cheapest product now costs $170 (70-80 bucks more expensive than JDS; corporations won't endorse the free Fedora as it doesn't have support) while SuSE's recent purchase by Novell has put a break on their sales as most big customers want to know what will Novell do with these products before they buy in. So yeah, Sun does have a good chance to grab a good portion of the Linux/Unix corporate desktop market with JDS, and because of its fair price and SO7 inclusion, they can overcome the distro's shortcomings in the eyes of its buyers.

Will it sell? I think it will, especially among existing Sun Solaris customers, as this product interoperates well with Solaris and other Sun server products. Will it become very widely successful? Only time will tell, but if Sun give out a free unsupported version it will certainly help its spread out. Nevertheless, the product should get more polish and care before I give it better marks. And some innovation too instead of a stock cut-down SuSE distro with SO7 and a brand name behind it.

Installation: 6.5/10
Hardware Support: 7/10
Ease of use: 7.5/10
Features: 7/10
Credibility: 7.5/10 (stability, bugs, security)
Speed: 7/10 (throughput, UI responsiveness, latency)

Overall: 7.08

Table of contents

1. Java Desktop System, Page 1
2. Java Desktop System, Page 2