Johannesburg, 22 Aug 2003
At the Linuxworld conference in San Francisco, the company unveiled a new Linux-based alternative desktop, and Java-based innovations that will shatter the dimensions of the traditional user experience, says Dumisani Mtoba, senior systems engineer at Sun Microsystems SA.
With the first public demonstration of Project Mad Hatter, Sun's fully-integrated open desktop environment for Linux, Solaris and SunRay has taken a step closer to mainstream computing. Project Mad Hatter includes Java technology, the GNOME desktop environment, Ximian Evolution and Sun's StarOffice productivity suite.
"Scheduled for general release at its SunNetwork conference in September 2003, the alternative desktop will deliver dramatically lower per-seat costs in business environments while delivering familiar look and feel, interoperability and comparable functionality to the typical PC more securely," says Mtoba.
"Project Mad Hatter will change the economics, definition and experience of desktop computing," says Jonathan Schwartz, Sun Microsystems's executive vice-president for software.
"But this is only the beginning. The combination of Java and Linux is a driving force - bringing network services to 1.2 billion devices supported by over 3 million developers. Our Linux strategy is to leverage the powerful combination of Java and Linux to open and grow new markets for network computing."
Schwartz also reaffirmed Sun's commitment to open communities and open standards by detailing its contribution of over 8 million lines of code to the open source community, driving participation in OpenOffice.org, Mozilla.org, java.net and its recent membership of the Open Source Development Lab.
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