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First Look: Java Desktop System

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Goldy Lukka

Posts: 1008
Nickname: xyling
Registered: Jan, 2004

Goldy Lukka is a Java Developer and an Entrepreneur. He is Founder of xyling.com.
First Look: Java Desktop System Posted: Jan 27, 2004 6:57 AM
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Original Post: First Look: Java Desktop System
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Two days back I received an evaluation copy of Java Desktop System aka JDS and here a First Look at Sun's revolutionary product. I will post the FirstLook:JDS in 7 parts covering all the features in detail.
Here is what I got bundled in my evaluation version:

Start Office 7, Web Browser(Mozilla), E-Mail client, Calendar, Java 2 Platform version 1.4.2_02, Media Player, Music Player and many other softwares built on Java.

The Beginning
My evaluation CD was meant to be run from the CD drive only and did not require me to install anything on my hard drive.
So now, the JDS is in my CD drive and I have changed my first boot device as CD. JDS is detected and takes around 2 mins to start(Pretty good because it was all booted from drive and not from hard disk). I have a P4 at 1.9 GHz with 256 MB RAM.

Now the desktop appears and I see a very familier (to Windows) screen but yet with rich graphics. There are 4 icons present in the desktop as with any MS operating systems. "My Computer" which JDS calls "This Computer", "Recycle Bin" which JDS calls "Trash", "Network Neighbourhood" which JDS calls "Network.." and "My Documents" which JDS calls "Documents".

Alright, now its time to click on the "Start" which JDS calls "Launch" button. I click on Launch and get a very familier popup. Those who have used Linux previously would feel much more comfortable but otherwise there is nothing very complex about getting started.

I moved to "This Computer" and JDS has detected all the drives and partitions my computer had. Clicking on any drives would mount the device automatically to /mnt directory as in Linux systems.

The icons are very familier and customizable. An additional feature is the number of files and folders that are contained are also displayed with each folder icon (yes, same as GUIs seen in Linux).

Those who are new to *nix based system might find a bit uncomfortable while browsing the filesystem but it should not take more time to get on with it soon.

Players

I tried playing some music but.... sorry to say the player was very basic, like, MPlayer in windows. It did not have any plugins or DSP support. Simply putting a very basic and generic player.
I tried also playing a movie with .dat format but sorry to say that it was not recognized and I could not experience the performance.
Conclusion: There needs to be some 3rd party players just like winamp venturing into this and getting us a richer entertainment.

Internet
I also had looked at the Browser and E-Mail client. The e-mail client is very similar to MS Outlook but in my honest opinion not as impressive. However, I might be feeling this because I am addicted to MS clients.
The browser is mozilla and is very similar in looks as Netscape 6, but could be improved and more useful. I could not use it as I was running an eval. copy.

Office Tools
Star Office 7 is bundled along and it is quite similar to MS Office. Of course, again, not as impressive as MS Office but does have all the features. May be because of the installed fonts I did not love it.
I will blog a detailed look at SO7 as I explore more.

Hardware detection
Excellent. JDS detected all my hardwares including network adapters and USB ports. In fact, it also have a PDA interfacing application, so those who have Palm or other PDA would be able to sync their data.

Updates and Bugs
There are 2 direct links to updates and bug reports. Quite good :)

Accessories
Few java based applications are bundled as accessories. An image editor (better than MS Paint but nowhere comparable to Photoshop), JEdit for text editing and other java based applications. Stangely there was no basic notepad :(
I would love to see a notepad for JDS and otherwise i would create one for the community to download from my site. Keep visiting http://www.xyling.com.

So thats all for this post. I am planning to write a detailed article exploring JDS.

[Resource-Type: Review, Category: OS/JDS, XRating: 5]

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