August 6, 2003
Sun Shines on Complete Linux Desktop
By Susan Kuchinskas
SAN FRANCISCO -- Sun Microsystems (Quote, Company Info)
is all over Linux, company executive vice president of software Jonathan
Schwartz told an audience at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo Tuesday.
And
to hear him tell it, Sun hopes to take a big chunk out of rival Microsoft's
soft butt. In his keynote address, Schwartz said that the Santa Clara, Calif.-based
network computer maker has a "ruthless commitment" to Linux. "We are more committed to open source than anyone on the planet," Schwartz reiterated over and over.
At
the show, Sun previewed the latest version of StarOffice at the show, saying
that more than 60 million copies of StarOffice and OpenOffice.org, its community-developed
predecessor, are in circulation. Schwartz said the two suites had "unstoppable
desktop momentum." Schwartz
promised Microsoft a world of hurt, then showed the keynote audience an alpha
version of Project Mad Hatter, a complete Linux desktop environment that
Sun hopes will replace Microsoft Office on personal computers and within
mid-range and smaller businesses. Schwartz
said Project Mad Hatter would deliver "the moral equivalent" of each Windows
desktop function at 80 to 90 percent the cost. The package includes an operating
system as well as a GUI, browser, e-mail and IM apps, Java to replace .Net
and basic productivity tools via StarOffice, which has already shipped. Sun
said it aims to make Project Mad Hatter interoperable with Lotus Notes and
Microsoft Office and Exchange. Schwartz
also said despite the company's investments in open source, Sun has no plans
to ditch its Solaris operating system to follow Linux, because Linux runs
best on Intel, while Solaris works better on mainframes. He said that Sun
would maintain its commitment to evolve Solaris and Project Orion, an assembly
of core components for network services. To AIC users about to be abandoned by IBM, he said, "Welcome home. We'd love to host you."
The
company maintained it will offer quarterly updates of Solaris and Project
Orion to be delivered synchronously on Intel and 64-bit systems. Sun also confirmed months of speculation Tuesday that it's teamed up with Sunnyvale, Calif.-based semiconductor maker AMD (Quote, Company Info)
to provide native Java support for both Linux and Windows on AMD's 64-bit
Opteron processor. The deal will let developers migrate their Java applications
from the 32-bit to 64-bit platform with little or no change to the code.
The
company said its Sun ONE Studio developer tools already run on Red Hat Linux
and Solaris x86 and support full J2SE and J2EE development. Sun said it expects
the Opteron port to be available with the release of its Java 2 Platform,
Standard Edition (J2SE) v 1.5, due out in the summer of 2004. J2SE licensee
Blackdown contributed to the development. Schwartz
said Sun has joined the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL), a global consortium
of technology companies working to accelerate the adoption of Linux by giving
engineering and technical assistance through data centers in Japan and the
U.S. Other OSDL members include Computer Associates (Quote, Company Info), Fujitsu, HP(Quote, Company Info), IBM (Quote, Company Info), Intel (Quote, Company Info) and NEC .
Sun is one of the last major players to join the initiative, but says it
will participate in the Carrier Grade Linux and Data Center Linux working
groups that focus on the use of the Linux operating system in the enterprise
and telecommunications environments.
Editor's note: See what else Jonathan Schwartz has to say about Sun and Linux in this exclusive Q&A.
 
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