Sun's Global Desktop Released

aphaenogaster writes "Suns Global Desktop version 4.2 has been released and appears to be quite effective. Applications load very quickly, and is not limited to Sparc or Solaris. Applications piped to a desktop across a slow DSL line appear to work very well. Sun has also set up a test server for users to play with."

Interesting, but...

[Alphax.au]

...what can it do that ssh and an X11 session can't? And if you're being forced to use a browser to access your server, who says that you're not on a machine with keyloggers and screen capturing?

First question.....

[Allnighterking]

I wonder if it works. Seeing as how it was down faster than somewhere around the second post could be written. So much for Robust. One Monday morning 9am e-mail check would bring your entire company to it's knees.

Can this kind of application of an OS/System work. Heck Yes! It works and it's needed. However it will always fail as long as they keep trying to put all the eggs in one software basket so to speak. Stop with "one box that does it all. Get into the idea of, "this box does this, that box does that, and you can see it all from that box over there."

We need to move from the application having access to the OS, to the OS having access to the application. Once OS/data/application are void of their death grip on each other some really amazing things can begin to happen.

Re:I'm a mere user and...

[iamdrscience]

Lord knows, I'm not a techie, but it *increases* "reliliency" by having the applications located at the data center and not my PC??? And if I can't access the Data Center? Or if the application there becomes corrupt, virus infected, etc.?

Well, it cuts both ways, if you're running all your applications on one server, and that one machine goes down, you're fucked, but you only have to maintain one machine, not the multitudes of machines running your application. In the end, which setup makes the most sense depends on what type of application you're using.

Re:They just won't give up

[sol_geek77]

How is this any different then what Google is doing (aside from being the "benevolent and all holy" Goggle versus the "almost as evil as Microsoft" Sun)? The client should never matter when running the application and if you look here http://www.sun.com/download/products.xml?id=433240 e1 [sun.com] you can get the client application for just about anything including dumb terminals and handheld devices.

And stating that Sun is trying to put all applications on Sun systems is a bunch of crap. The design of the product is to have a gateway to all vendors applications. So you continue to run your existing applications and connect to them from the gateway, and no it doesn't have to be Solaris http://www.sun.com/download/products.xml?id=43321d b9 [sun.com]

Re:Wow Its X11 - remoted X11 has limitations

[poopie]

Try remoting some chatty X11 apps across a 100 millisecond link.

Then introduce periodic link failures that make remoted X apps go "pop!"

Then constrain an entire office down to a few mbps of shared WAN bandwidth

Then introduce IP phones that suck up all the "extra" bandwidth.

Re:I'm a mere user and...

[pavera]

Lord knows, I'm not a techie, but it *increases* "reliliency" by having the applications located at the data center and not my PC??? And if I can't access the Data Center? Or if the application there becomes corrupt, virus infected, etc.?

Ok, so you trust your desktop machine with a 40GB IDE disk drive, that you admit you install applications and such onto (probably from the internet), so you've got at least 1 virus, and probably 300-400 hits on a random run of spybot... and that power supply in your system isn't redundant, and if you have a UPS it maybe lasts for 5 minutes... but you trust that more than the 2 redundant servers in the data center, with triple redundant power supplies, a RAID5 SAN, and redundant NICs, and a 6 hour UPS sitting underneath it....

See, with this system, you can get full redundancy for the whole enterprise by simply building a 2-3 machine cluster... Everything is redundant, and I guarantee you I can build a system that will smoke your little Dell as far as reliability is concerned, and I can do it for the cost of maybe 10 standard PCs...

Oh yeah, and now you can access your applications from any internet connected computer, not just your Dell that sits in your cube. Also, now your computer at your cube can be replaced by a completely silent, fanless, no moving parts thin client...

If you believe part of your compensation package is being able to make system admins life hell... well I'm glad I don't work at the same place you do. Besides the license violations your machine probably presents (I know I worked at a firm that got audited by the SBA, and you wonderful users with your "Oh, I think I'll just install this app even though the IT guys told me I couldn't" cost that company more than 750k in fines). 99% of all "computer" problems are problems with some crap software the users have installed... "But I have to have this new nifty 3d Screensaver with weather reports"... Oh it logs all my keystrokes and sends them to a server in the Ukraine, and it also attempts to automatically install this software on random PCs across the internet and that's why the network has been slow for the last week? I don't care I've gotta see this cool 3d butterfly! Or my favorite was the lady who kept installing real networks player (even though we uninstalled it almost every night from her machine) to watch real time video of birds hatching... on a 128k ISDN line that fed 100+ employees... and everyone wondered why for 2 months in the spring the internet was mysteriously slow...

Part of your compensation package is not to use the computer systems however you feel... They are provided to do a job, not watch movies or play MP3s, and they are certainly not provided to allow you to run up expenses in the IT dept. If you want that go purchase your own PC, but leave the company systems to their proper function.

Re:Who copied who?

[NitsujTPU]

Neither, both look like modern realizations of a number of technologies that exist and/or have existed for a while. If nobody's suing, what difference does it make?

Re:I'm a mere user and...

[MagicMike]

I'm sorry - but something's amiss here.

You proclaim you can make a more resilient setup with centralized, network-accessible services, but you were unable to find (and permanently fix) a one-PC bandwidth problem in two months?

Now, I'm all for centralized services when it makes sense, but you haven't sold me in this case ;-)

Nothing personal, that one just jumped out at me. Maybe it was the idea of watching baby birds hatching live...

Re:I'm a mere user and...

[fferreres]

You are probably a developer/sysadmin...this is for a company operating in 7 countries with 25,000 notebooks/desktops for specific purposes, like POS, specific apps, etc.).

Companies do not want every employee being a vulnerability due to malware, virus, etc. can cause chaos. This is not for you.

Re:I'm a mere user and...

[HavokDevNull]

"is access to applications and a modicum of control over my PC, applications, and user experience."

You my friend and people like you are the reason why the CTO and myself will do our best to demo this to upper management and executives. Along with cost savings analysis (bye bye Winblows licencing hell), security analysis (bye bye Winblows security hell) and help desk analysis (bye bye wanabe Winblows poweruser hell), etc..

It's not the people who are completely new to computers that give me the hardest time, in fact I enjoy working with them and teaching them. It's the people who think they "Know" / "I'm computer literate" that give me the most headaches. For example; A user pluggin in laptop analog modem to a digital phone port thinking it will some how get access to the internal network, and yet it's IT's fault because they did not get a report sent out on time because of said lack of network connectivity, and they did not bother to tell us in the first place they had a problem to begin with! And yes this is the same person who said "I'm computer literate".

So lets sum it up shall we? You know enough to really hose your OS and don't know enough or are too lazy to fix it yourself. People like you are the #1 reason why thin clients and a centralized server with only access to applications that you have permissions to work with to do your job only, will become a standardized setting in the future.