Indonesia’s Ministry of Research and Technology Thurday said it will implement a Java Desktop System on Linux as a national-standard desktop, customed-designed for its own culture. This desktop software will be a major component of the new Indonesia Goes Open Source (IGOS) program that aims to help eliminate the “digital divide in the world’s largest archipelago,” the ministry and Sun Microsystems said in a joint announcement.
This need to have Linux ‘blessed’ by a major corporation is absurd, why not take Linux and develop or contract the development of a new distribution, surely that would improve the understanding of technology rather more.
I bet their are more than enough local Linux savvy people to do that.
Because its more hassle than its worth.
Because politics and religion are really the same thing… and the open source development model encourages code reuse.
I’m not a Debian fan but I think that in this case they could use Debian instead of JDS. It has support (good I think) for their language and is realy rock solid distro. Well, it seems they didn’t want to pay their own companies, they’ve preffered to pay SUN. But yes, this choice is always difficult – from the big company such as Novell, Sun or RedHat they get support that doesn’t come with Debian/other_community_maintained_distros.
Exactly, the more Linux distributions, the better. The more package managers, the better. The more GUIs, the better. It is so funny, to read articles explaining how the distro #15673 is so easy to install.
“I bet their are more than enough local Linux savvy people to do that.”
You haven’t been to Indonesia, I have. Indo is a Window pirating heaven. Its IT environment is all MS, being maintained by BAD windows people. At least here in the US, we have relatively decent windows people maintaining their shop. Indonesia does NOT have the right people to do what you say.
If we were talking about Singapore, Japan, or Korea … but we aren’t.
“You haven’t been to Indonesia, I have. Indo is a Window pirating heaven. Its IT environment is all MS, being maintained by BAD windows people. At least here in the US, we have relatively decent windows people maintaining their shop. Indonesia does NOT have the right people to do what you say.
If we were talking about Singapore, Japan, or Korea … but we aren’t.”
Actually, we have some linux savvy here in Indonesia. You can browse linux.or.id. You’ll found more links to local linux user group).
Or browse some planets here in indo: planet.terasi.net , id-gmail.info . You may found some savviness there.
Maybe it can be used to adjust the savviness statistic.
Noo, I’m not talking about Singapore, nor Japan, nor Korea … I’m talking about Indonesia.
This is probably a smarter move (for Indonesia) than the Thai government’s “Mac up your life” law.
S.E.A. language support is actually worse under Mac 10.4 than it was under 10.3 –whereas the open source movement shows slow but steady growth in support for these languages (in Unicode).
I’m guessing the Java Desktop “layer” is important to the program for language-compatable G.U.I. reasons.
Language support is probably less of an issue than in Thailand because Indonesian uses the same alphabet as english
Come on, Indonesia HAD to choose a distribution called JAVA desktop system … Or maybe it is not the JDS they’ve chosen, but JBS (Java, Borneo Sumatra) 😉
in a country with high corruption rate like indonesia, i am not surprised if the government’s decision was “inspired” by sun. one good point in this is of course, you get linux adoption fast, with support from a multinational corp. although i am not really fond of sun, they’re doing the right things in the interest of their shareholders. i guess.
—
garapheane
You’re nuts if you think Sun can outspend Microsoft on political ‘donations’.
The Title of the article is msileading “Indonesia Adopts JDS on Linux as a National Desktop” is not the same thingh as “Indonesia’s Ministry of Research and Technology “
This is the best movement of Indonesian ministry.
One more adoption of Linux.
I love Indonesia.
Is JDS for Linux still alive? I thought Sun has already dropped Linux and put JDS on Solaris 10 from JDS 3.
Own distro or not.This is a sure sign some people not waiting for the Vista train to come through.
Hurray for them.
That the indonesian goverment was looking for a name they could recognise when choosing the product(company) for their linux migration. That in itself is not a bad deal at all, if you ask me. Besides, I think many companies think of the Debian project as a bunch of boys in basements coding, (no intention to offend the hard working debian devs) or well, at least there’s serious work around debian from other vendors.
I submitted this same article yesterday and for some reason CJ appears as the submitter. For what I see the staff is either ignoring me or CJ just beat me to it.
The latter would sound reasonable If it wasn’t that none of the other articles I’ve found and submitted were never posted either.
I submitted this same article yesterday and for some reason CJ appears as the submitter. For what I see the staff is either ignoring me or CJ just beat me to it.
The latter would sound reasonable If it wasn’t that none of the other articles I’ve found and submitted were never posted either.
I’ve only submitted a few articles, but each and every one has appeared under a staff members name with no attribution to anyone a day or so later. I think it is probably because OSNews writes their own summary or something, and nothing personal. Who knows though.
I am still waiting for the verdict on Linux usage in Munich last time i heard anything about that endeavour was that it was turning out to be a huge headache. I would expect the same in Indonesia.
…considering Sun is dropping all support for JDS/Linux and moving entirely to JDS/Solaris…
So, just like China there will be a big fanfare and we’ll never hear anything more about it.
This government is adopting JDS which is not a linux distribution. The JDS developed by Sun is plainy just a gnome desktop environment.
“Indonesia’s Ministry of Research and Technology Thursday said it will implement a Java Desktop System (JDS) on Linux”
The point is moot at this point that they are using Linux. They are concerned more with the adoption of a single environment rather than tuggle with the type of distribution which could very well end up being Debian.
They would also be open in the future to switch to using Solaris x86 and still have the same environment. A good overall choice.
Java Desktop System is part of the Solaris 10 Operating System which is available as a free download. You can’t beat that price! Release 2 for Linux OS is sold at the low price of $100 per desktop.
I’m not exactly an expert in interpreting publicity but…
It seems that they do support JDS Linux, of course I don’t know for how long, but because the license, by the time support ends they can get their local talent to maintain support for these JDS boxes, and creating job opportunities in doing so.
i’m indonesia….
FYI indonesia IT research bodies have its own linux distribution and now they use JDS, silly gov
(not to mention our president has a special agreement with bill gates while they implement IGOS 
)