Sun's Linux rising in China [LWN.net]

November 20, 2003

This article was contributed by Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier.

The biggest news for Linux this week, surprisingly, comes from Sun Microsystems. Sun has reached an agreement with the China Standard Software Company (CSSC) that is aimed at putting Sun's Linux solution, the Java Desktop System (JDS), on up to 200 million desktops throughout China. The agreement is set to begin towards the end of this year, with an initial goal of 500,000 to one million seats per year. There is no specific timeline for the ultimate goal of 200 million desktops, and CSSC will need to improve adoption rates significantly beyond 500,000 per year to achieve that figure in a meaningful time frame.

CSSC is made up of a group of Chinese high-tech companies, with the backing of the Chinese government and a mandate to create a standard Linux desktop system for the Chinese market. We spoke to Peder Ulander, Director of Marketing for Sun Microsystems Desktop Solutions, about the deal with CSSC and Sun's JDS in general. He tells us that CSSC's final product will be based on JDS, but customized for the Chinese market. Ulander didn't specify how CSSC's version might differ, but noted that it will be running on x86-based computers. At the moment, specific information on CSSC's deployment of a desktop Linux system is fairly sketchy. Ulander said that CSSC will be issuing announcements of its own in the near future.

Why not Solaris for x86? Sun has been touting its x86 Solaris offering pretty heavily lately, and it hasn't exactly shown enthusiasm for Linux despite the fact that the company has a number of Linux offerings. Ulander said that Sun made the decision based on time to market. Though Ulander did not say so, another way to read that would be that Solaris for x86 isn't ready for deployment on existing x86 desktop hardware, while Linux is.

Indeed, JDS has relatively minimal hardware requirements. According to Sun, a recommended minimum configuration for JDS is a Pentium II 266MHz or better, 128 MB of RAM and a 4GB hard disk. While some Linux distributions still run on 386s with 8MB of RAM (or less), the target for JDS seems to be computers originally outfitted with Windows 95 or 98. Ulander noted that Microsoft will be discontinuing support for Windows 95 and Office 95 this year, with Windows NT 4 and OS/2 also losing support in the near future. Companies looking for supported solutions now need to look to newer versions of Windows that will likely require newer hardware as well -- or a migration path to a supported Linux distribution.

Sun's distribution uses the GNOME desktop, Mozilla, StarOffice, Evolution and (not surprisingly) includes a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) for Linux. Ulander said that Sun settled on GNOME rather than KDE because of GNOME's focus on accessibility. From what Sun has revealed about JDS so far, there is little to distinguish their Linux desktop solution from other vendors' solutions. Ulander confirmed that JDS consists of the same components that make up most distributions, but said that Sun's "integration" of the software will set it apart from other distributions.

Of course, Sun's offering is different from other vendors in that it isn't branded "Linux." Ulander said that the name "Java Desktop System" was not meant to obscure the Linux underpinnings of the system, but rather to fit in with the rest of Sun's rebranded product line. According to Ulander, Sun has consolidated 248 individual products into six product lines, including the Java Enterprise System, Java Desktop System and so on.

Sun's published prices are $100 per desktop user, or $50 per employee for existing customers of Sun's Java Enterprise System, but CSSC will be paying less to license JDS. Ulander declined to specify how much less CSSC would be paying, but said that Sun was giving CSSC a deal similar to a typical OEM agreement where the company would pay less than list.

We're making money on the deal, but when you look at it this deal is not about, "cool we closed a deal," it's a market-tipping deal, setting the standard... This is a landmark deal. A fairly large region investing in this space, it brings a lot more credibility to what we're doing...

In fact, the deal brings a lot of credibility to Linux in general. But it does give bragging rights to Sun as the company to score the largest Linux desktop deal, at least to date, and may give the company leverage to sell other (more profitable) solutions to companies that make the switch. Ulander called JDS "a door-opener," but said that organizations deploying JDS were in no way dependent on Sun solutions on the server side.

Sun's JDS will be generally available in December of this year. Though Sun has secured a significant spot in the Chinese market with JDS, it will be interesting to see how well Sun fares with the rest of the Linux market.

Meanwhile, it's hard to see how adoption of Linux on such a wide scale anywhere in the world could be a bad thing for the community. Sun was not the only company having talks with CSSC, indicating that CSSC had already settled on Linux, but hadn't decided on a vendor. While Sun may tout this as a success for their business, and it is, it really emphasizes the maturity of Linux as a desktop solution.

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Similarities with SuSE

Posted Nov 20, 2003 11:46 UTC (Thu) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link]

If I remember well, SuSE was one of the first (or just the first high profile?) distribution which wasn't available to download for free in ISO format. Will this JDS be similar in this feature to SuSE? If they want to get 100$ per seat, they probably won't let anyone download the CDs...

Bye,NAR

Similarities with SuSE

Posted Nov 20, 2003 12:34 UTC (Thu) by duck (guest, #4444) [Link]

Hi,

first, you are allowed to use a copy of the SuSE CDs. Second, you can do
an FTP install straight from their web site. This give you the additional
benefit that you do not even have to think about the DVD / CDs when you
want to add an rpm, it is just fetched from the web-site including all
other needed rpms.

Of course, they do not allow ISOs to boost their sales, but I like that
much better than not providing the "cheap" products at all.

The hurdle of getting a free SusE is _very_ low, if you can't jump that
high, you might be bettere of with the printed manual anyway ;-)

Cheers