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Java Destop System......


albertlee

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It is a linux OS made by Sun.....

 

but, what kind of platform does JDS run on?? or,

 

what platform does Sun usually choose for its OS??? for eg, Solaris?

 

I found that it is a linux OS, which is mostly for the company use, because it comes with many software and support with a cheap anual price

 

but whatever that is, I found no information what it has to do with "java", as its name suggests...

 

Any one??

 

Albert

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but whats wrong with the standard either MS Windows or Linux OSs?

 

yeah, I was puzzled about that

 

by the way, as you can see in this link:http://www.sun.com/software/javadesktopsystem/ds/index.xml

 

it says the Os contains Open Source Components, what is it??

 

for examples,

SuSE Linux Desktop 1.0 Variant

GNOME 2.2

Ximian Evolution 1.4

Mozilla 1.4 browser

OpenOffice.org 1.1 (basis for StarOffice 7 suite)

 

Secondly, sorry if this is too basic, since linux system comes in different distrbutions, can I use a linux software from one distro another distro version of linux??

 

thx

 

Albert

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you should be able to use a program for linux distro 'x' on linux distro 'y'..... but it could vary, so you should check to be certain.

 

if the OS contains open source components, well you know what open source is from your thread.... components means its not ALL open source, only some of it... you'd have to look into it to find out which exact parts.

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you should be able to use a program for linux distro 'x' on linux distro 'y'..... but it could vary' date=' so you should check to be certain.

 

if the OS contains open source [u']components[/u], well you know what open source is from your thread.... components means its not ALL open source, only some of it... you'd have to look into it to find out which exact parts.

 

what!?

 

Isn't Linux completely open source??

 

How come you could make a partially open source Linux??

 

Albert

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Linux is made up of bits of programs; when you download a distribution of Linux, you don't download just one program. You download a plethora of librarys, applications, etc that when collected together make a Linux system. There are things like kernel modules for graphics drivers which are not open source, but you can still use them on the system. However, the majority of the software available for Linux is open source based.

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Why the kernel modules for drivers are not open source??

 

probably because they do not want you to take the coding or see how it works or edit the coding or something.

 

clearly if it is not open source you cannot easily view the coding for it, normally because the company who made it dont want you to see it!

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Making closed drivers is the companies' way of protecting their products and hindering open source. It pisses people off, but since the driver at least works it stops them from complaining too much.

 

Albertlee, it is not as simple as just copying some .dll's from windows over to linux to get windows support. The Wine project (http://www.winehq.org) is working on it though, building windows libraries and API's from scratch.

 

I'm sure that Sun had to be very careful when they made that system, and put a lot of money into lawyers' pockets. The terms of the GPL license, which most open source software is released under, are pretty complex when it comes to shared libraries and stuff, and what they can and can't be included in. See, normally if you use any GPL code in a project, the entire thing must in turn be released under the GPL or a GPL compatible license, but when you are just including a library things become messier.

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just a warning, dont play with .dll files, just moving or renaming one can force windows into the BSOD (blue screen of death)... meaning a reinstal, or for me that didnt work, dunno why, so i had to format.

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I was responding to 5614's post.

 

As for the difference between libraries and api's; a library is just a collection of variables and other stuff. There's nothing particularly special about it.

 

API is short for "application program interface". For something like the Windows API, it provides a way for applications to talk to/use the kernel (for memory management etc) without having to resort back to assembly. Or at least that's my understanding of things, I can't really help much more with that.

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Libraries provide little bits of code to any program that wants to take advantage of them. This saves them work, the user space, and generally makes life easier. I believe that .h headers are similar to, if not are, libraries. Take the string.h header for example. This saves you the work of making a string class in every program by taking the necessary code and making it available to any program that wants it.

 

An API is like the instructions for how something is used. For instance, google just announced that they will be releasing an adwords API, and they've already released the API for the actual engine. This API provides programmers with the documentation necessary to utilize their services. It probably contains a number of shared libraries as well. One might provide a function to do a google search on a specific term, returning the desired number of results, or another might take a bit of text and translate it to the desired language.

 

I really can't explain it any better than giving examples, so here is another. Programs like Firefox, GAIM, and Winamp allow users to make plugins. This plugin capability is basically just providing programmers with an API so that they can utilize features of the original program.

 

I'm sure you can do a google search or something and find out lots more information, explained better than I could.

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  • 1 month later...
I still dont get' date='

 

what is the difference of API and Libraries???[/quote']

Silencer provided a pretty good explanation. An API is an application programming interface. Interfaces are ways for things to interface (interact) with something else. For example, a database vendor may provide tremendous functionality. Do you want to learn the vendor specific way to implement the functionality for each and every database that you might use? Of course not. An API is a set of method/function/whatever calls that people can learn, and much more easily, that enable them to tap into the functionality of an application without having to learn the down and dirty of the application's internals.

 

If you want to program to windows, all you need to learn is the set of function calls in the Windows API. These function calls tell you what funcionality you can invoke and how to invoke it. Who cares what happens within the application to implement those calls.

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