Thats pretty foresighted of them, 200 million desktops at 1/2 to 1 million a year.. SUN are now planning ahead 200-400 years in the future?

Could you post where you read this?

Kev

PS. You should dedicate at least one machine to Linux

The article I read hasn't been in english but Abies quoted an URL to one. This clears the situation and I've edited my original article accordingly.


Yes, you're absolutely right. Unfortunately I don't have got two PCs at home at the moment.

Sun may have hit on a gold mine with this desktop thing;

Alot of people are eager for an alternative to microsoft it seems.

The only reason I'm not using Linux full time is the lack of an easy way to connect to a dsl modem with a non-network pc.  Its a 1 dialogue operation in winXP but with linux you have to call your isp and find out your ip mask and some other stuff then modify your config files; bleh.

Or get a DSL model with a ethernet connection? (or can't you get these, cable modems come with um)

Kev

Probably. And more: it will help Java and Linux a lot (also Openoffice and Staroffice). The Asia IT market is going to dominate the world's one in a few years, so it's cool that they start to install the "Java Desktop System" as standard now.
While I don't know if the Chinese users will buy "our" Java games (and apps), it's only the beginning: don't forget the IT alliance which China, Japan and (South-) Korea builded. In Japan and Korea not only do video games sell well, several of the best video games ever come from Japan. Also these people got many high speed Internet connections - so they could download the JRE with no problems, if they didn't have it already due to the "Java Desktop System", hehe.

http://wwws.sun.com/software/javadesktopsystem/faq.html
Q.: "Why was the product name Sun Java Desktop System selected?"
A.: "Java technology plays a very important role in the Java Desktop System - the Java Virtual Machine is integrated, the Mozilla browser is Java-aware, Java is the preferred development environment, etc. To reinforce this, we have selected the name Sun Java Desktop System."


Strange. I still find some other reasons why not to use Linux full time yet, however going to the Internet per cable DSL modem (PPP over Ethernet) has been a one click operation with Suse Linux and a three click operation with Mandrake. Same applied to ISDN adapters. ;-)
Actually connecting to the Internet has been easier with Linux compared to Win2000 for me.

No joke, remember there are over 2 billion people in Asia.  Thats one hell of a market and alot of human potential waiting to be tapped.

I do have dsl thru ethernet; I could never figure out what went wrong.  Well, I'm getting ready to move and when I do I'm going to drop dsl (wasting too much time forum lurking, not getting any gamedev done.....) and go back to dial up so I'll give it another go then.  I'm making a list of downloads to burn to cdrom before I do that though....

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1406645,00.asp
:-)

Lets not forget these are just proposals to use the "Sun Java Desktop" but hopefully some will eventuate.  Sun's doing a good job of boosting Linux acceptance in the work force.

I'd be switching my office tomorrow if we weren't locked in to Windows due to heavy use of VB and Access (by previous IT staff - believe me if I had my way it would be Java all the way).

Will.