MESSAGE
| DATE | 2004-06-22 |
| FROM | From: "Inker, Evan"
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] Desktop Linux: Sun Shines
|
While I may agree with the conclusion that Linux Desktop are definitely
Business and Corporate Ready, I disagree with the assertion that Sun Java
Desktop System is as good as stated. In fact, most reviews put Sun Java
Desktop System on a lower rating than Suse or Redhat Linux. Please also keep
in mind that Sun Java Desktop System 2 is still running Suse 8.2 as core
with Sun Java 1.4.1 and Star Office 7 while Suse has already released 9.1.
For anyone interested in a demo of Sun JDS Version 1.0, please let me know
and I arrange a hands-on demo.
Desktop Linux: Sun Shines
June 21, 2004
By Jason Brooks
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1614767,00.asp
Desktop Linux is good enough to supplant Windows in a number of enterprise
desktop roles, and it has been for some time now. However, major enterprise
Linux vendors-most notably Red Hat Inc.-have been too busy until recently
with server-room Linux to produce desktop products with the sort of
management frameworks and stable product road maps that enterprises require.
That changed with the release last month of two desktop Linux variants from
major enterprise players: Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Java Desktop System 2 and
Red Hat's Red Hat Desktop.
eWEEK Labs' tests show that both products feature pretty much the same set
of software components. The difference between the two boils down to the
quality and scope of their management tools, as well as the overall
attention to detail with which each product was assembled.
Check out the executive summaries for Java Desktop System 2 and Red Hat
Desktop.
We found that, in all these areas, Sun's Java Desktop System 2 edges out Red
Hat Desktop. We'll go as far as to say Java Desktop System advances the
state of enterprise desktop Linux-enough so that we've given it an Analyst's
Choice award.
Java Desktop System 2 is Sun's second crack at the corporate desktop. We
were impressed by the improvements that Sun has introduced since the first
version. One of the biggest enhancements is a capable management framework
that provides the broadest set of management tools we've yet seen for the
Linux desktop.
Red Hat Desktop is the first product from Red Hat specifically targeted at
the corporate desktop, and the offering showed its immaturity in tests. It's
basically a less expensive version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 with fewer
features. Very little has been done to make the operating system better
suited for the desktop.
That said, Red Hat Desktop is still a strong distribution that will perform
well for companies that already run Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers and
want to plug a batch of desktops into their Red Hat management
infrastructure.
Both distributions will work well in simple, Web-terminal-type roles; for
more ambitious deployments, it's really a matter of which applications users
require.
Java Desktop System 2 and Red Hat Desktop will work well for basic desktop
needs, such as messaging and office productivity. However, companies that
continue to standardize on Microsoft Corp. Office document formats may never
be completely free of small file-compatibility issues. Although options for
running Windows applications on Linux-such as CodeWeavers Inc.'s CrossOver
Office-have been improving, they should be viewed more as workaround tools
than as drop-in replacements.
Java Desktop System 2 and Red Hat Desktop can be a fit as developer
workstations because they ship with good development tools: Java Desktop
System comes with Sun's JDK (Java Development Kit), Sun Java System Studio
and NetBeans, and Red Hat Desktop comes with Eclipse and the Lomboz Eclipse
plug-in, a tool kit for J2EE (Java 2, Enterprise Edition) development.
Java Desktop System 2, including management tools, costs $100 per machine
per year or $50 per employee per year (for unlimited seats). Red Hat Desktop
costs about $70 per machine per year. Red Hat's management tools can cost
extra, depending on the management framework chosen, although the desktop
system does ship with a copy of Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Server,
Premium Edition.
Both desktop Linux systems ship with a productivity suite, making their cost
significantly lower than that of a comparable setup from Microsoft or Apple
Computer Inc.
For more in-depth price information, click here.
Red Hat Desktop ships with Version 2.4.21 of the Linux kernel, and Java
Desktop System 2 includes Version 2.4.19.
Both products run on x86 hardware. Sun recommends running Java Desktop
System 2 on a 600MHz Intel Corp. Pentium III or better processor, 4GB of
hard disk space and at least 256MB of RAM. Red Hat Desktop runs well on a
similar setup and supports Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s AMD64 and Intel's
EM64T architectures.
Next page: Management features.
Management features
Along with stability guarantees such as predictable end-of-life dates, Java
Desktop System 2 and Red Hat Desktop differentiate themselves from the bulk
of the desktop Linux field by their management features.
Red Hat's management tools, in the form of the company's Red Hat Network
service, have had a few years to mature while serving as the management
interface for Red Hat's server products. Red Hat Network demonstrates this
maturity with a slicker look and better integration than the tools for Java
Desktop System 2 have. However, Red Hat's tools show their server-centric
heritage with a lack of desktop-specific management options that Sun's tools
boast.
For example, we were impressed with Java Desktop System Configuration
Manager. It lets administrators define and apply configuration policies for
the GNOME desktop environment, Mozilla Web browser, StarOffice productivity
suite and Evolution groupware client.
Configuration Manager works with an LDAP server that stores user, group and
configuration policy data. Configuration Manager has a Web-based interface
that administrators can use to define and apply policies to managed systems.
Administrators can also use the tool to enact and enforce configuration
policies on user machines.
Using Configuration Manager's Web interface, we could access most
configuration options for the applications the tool supports and perform
tasks such as setting Web proxies for Mozilla, disabling macros or
defaulting to Microsoft Office formats in StarOffice. We could also block
access to any application on the machine.
With Red Hat Desktop, it's possible to handle some of these configuration
tasks through a Red Hat Network module that lets administrators edit
configuration files and push them to systems they're managing. These
configuration features require provisioning entitlements for each system to
be managed. These entitlements cost $96 more per year per system, which
substantially raises the cost of Red Hat Desktop.
In terms of cost and functionality, Red Hat Network's provisioning
entitlements fit much better with Red Hat's server products than with the
desktop product. We hope to see Red Hat build more desktop-focused tools
into Red Hat Network in the future.
Red Hat's tools fare much better with software deployment and system
inventory tasks. The Web interface for the Red Hat Network service is
well-done, and it provides administrators with a range of management tools.
>From the Red Hat Network control panel, we could review and arrange for
e-mail notification of bulletins on important updates, apply these updates
to systems and configure systems to update themselves.
For Red Hat Desktop clients, we could also manage systems in groups and
assign permissions for groups.
The Red Hat Network service can be hosted by Red Hat or bolstered by a proxy
server at an organization's site. Red Hat Network also can be self-hosted,
which requires a satellite server from Red Hat.
With a self-hosted Red Hat Network setup and the provisioning entitlement,
administrators can also deploy new systems from a network boot. Also capable
of deploying new systems this way is Sun Control Station 2.1, which ships
with Java Desktop System 2. Sun Control Station handles software
installation and system inventory tasks for Java Desktop System-based
devices and can manage servers running Red Hat Linux 7.3 and 8.0 and Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 2.1, as well as Solaris 8 and 9.
Java Desktop System 2 also includes a remote-takeover feature that lets
support staff remotely control a user machine to troubleshoot problems.
Next page: User experience.
User experience
Java Desktop System 2 and Red Hat Desktop ship with GNOME 2.2 as their
default desktop environment, and each desktop system carries its theme
across the environment.
Red Hat Desktop offers KDE 3.1.3 as a desktop environment alternative, a
choice that Java Desktop System 2 does not provide. Among desktop Linux
users, KDE is as popular as GNOME and has its own strengths, so it's nice to
see KDE available as an option.
Check out eWEEK Labs' review of KDE 3.2.
A downside of the staid development pace of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and
Novell Inc.'s SuSE Desktop 1-the enterprise Linux distributions on which Red
Hat Desktop and Java Desktop systems are respectively based-is that their
components are not the latest and greatest versions.
GNOME 2.2 is now two versions old, and it's missing some nice features
present in the latest version. For instance, GNOME 2.6 offers a dialog for
saving and opening files that's much-improved over the one that comes with
GNOME 2.2.
Click here to read the review of GNOME 2.6.
However, while Red Hat Desktop ships with the crude GNOME 2.2 dialog, Java
Desktop System 2 includes a modified version of the dialog that's much
easier to use.
Java Desktop System 2 and Red Hat Desktop ship with Evolution 1.4.5 as their
default groupware application. We tested both Evolution installations with
IMAP mail accounts. Evolution also can access Microsoft Exchange calendar,
contact and to-do data using Novell's free Exchange connector plug-in, but
neither Java Desktop System 2 nor Red Hat Desktop includes the plug-in.
In addition, it's fairly trivial to set up Evolution to use SpamAssassin for
client-side spam filtering, but neither desktop includes spam-filtering
capabilities in its version of Evolution.
See eWEEK Labs' review of Evolution 1.5.
Both desktops ship with the open-source Gaim instant messaging application,
which works well and supports multiple IM protocols.
Next page: Productivity apps, printing and networking.
Productivity apps
Java Desktop System 2 ships with the StarOffice 7 office productivity suite,
and Red Hat Desktop ships with OpenOffice.org 1.1. StarOffice is based on
the OpenOffice code base, so we weren't surprised that the suites were
similar. Both can do a good job of handling Office documents, but they work
best in their native document formats.
Click here to see how OpenOffice.org fared against Microsoft Office in an
eWEEK Labs eValuation.
One thing we appreciated about how StarOffice is configured with Java
Desktop System 2 is that the appropriate external programs were set. For
example, when we were ready to e-mail a document, StarOffice launched
Evolution. In contrast, we had to set up Red Hat Desktop to launch
Evolution.
For Web browsing, both desktops include Mozilla 1.4, an excellent browser
with good standards support, as well as usability features, such as pop-up
blocking and tabbed browsing, that Microsoft's Internet Explorer lacks.
Printing and network
We could connect both our desktop Linux test machines to networked printers
and print from the desktops as we'd expect, and we could browse Windows
network shares using Samba. We could also browse Sun's NFS (Network File
System) shares.
One annoying thing with both products was that we couldn't directly edit an
OpenOffice.org document stored on a Samba share; we had to first copy the
document to our local disk.
Handling network shares well is another improvement in the latest version of
GNOME, and, as with the file dialogs, we found that Sun has improved the
default network share functionality compared with what Red Hat has done.
Along similar lines, we were pleased that we could plug a USB (Universal
Serial Bus) thumb drive into the Java Desktop System 2-based machine and
have the device turn up with other drives in the system's This Computer
folder. Red Hat Desktop does not have a comparable folder; we had to
manually mount our USB drive to access it.
Senior Analyst Jason Brooks can be reached at jason_brooks-at-ziffdavis.com.
Check out eWEEK.com's Linux & Open Source Center at http://linux.eweek.com
for the latest open-source news, reviews and analysis.
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