Want to try a real Java + Linux based desktop? JD4X and ZerahStar are joining efforts to produce a next generation desktop. It is still in very early stages of development but worth the try.
Java Desktop for X
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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… the Zerahstar website does not give away a lot about the Zesktops it’s features etc. – the logo seems to be a rip off from the Ubuntu logo, well at least the idea.
>… the Zerahstar website does not give away a lot about the
>Zesktops it’s features etc.
No they just give their whole sourcecode away..its not much i agree.
>the logo seems to be a rip off from the Ubuntu logo, well at
>least the idea.
Your comment seems to be a rip off from a Troll, well at least it gives me that idea.
Instead of making these anoying and useless comments you could go out and try to actually do something. Bah!
What exactly IS ZerahStar’s ZESKTOP? There is little information on their webpage and the link to download ZESKTOP leads to JD4X. The screenshots of ZESKTOP look like just plain JD4X. What’s the deal?
Zesktop is our research and development project. Its goal is to achieve a totally automated computing system that is capable of maintaining and fixing itself without any need for human intervention. Other possible features we are working on would include a highly portable and virus free environment. Zesktop is still a project and concept under development and would require your continued support.
Currently, we have only released a simple live desktop CD. With it you can have a usable desktop even if your hard disk crashes such that you can no longer boot into your computer. Just pop our CD into your CD drive and it will give you a working desktop environment to fix or recover your Linux system. The live desktop CD will work reqardless of the operating system installed into your hard disk. In addition, you will be able to surf the internet if our Zesktop is able to detect your network card. The entire system is kept in RAM and holds no records of the active session after you reboot your computer. Therefore there is no need to worry about virus infecting your computer while using the CD. Another advantage to the Zesktop CD is that it is completely portable because it is self containing. Which simply means that everything that is needed to run your computer is residing on our single CD. Our Zesktop environment therefore does not require anything else to execute, not even your hard disk or pre-installed operating system.
We are currently distributing the Zesktop CD for free, however, we request that you consider donating the cost of the CD to the JD4X project. Please contact us if you want to advertize your product on our CD, customize a self contained environment for your product or if you are interested to invest in our technology.
DOWNLOAD ZESKTOP CD
ZESKTOP CD MD5SUM
System Requirements to run Zesktop CD:
* PC x86 architecture. ( Arch >= 486 )
* 128MBytes of RAM. (the smaller your RAM size, the slower it runs)
* At lease one CD Drive. (the faster your CD drive, the faster it runs)
Umm, not trying to troll here or anything but . . .
You make is sound as though you have created something really new and exciting, yet the facts you hand out are old and fairly dull these days. Meaning there are about 100 live CD distributions out there that all do everything you have mentioned. So while it is all good stuff, what is it that would separate your live CD from the rest of the pack? What do you do that they don’t. What would the advantage be in downloading your CD as opposed to knoppix, mepis, pclinuxos and on and on?
At the end of the day I ask this of projects like yours . . . give me a reason to want to donate money to you.
Thanks
Garret
I want to see what it looks like before I download it.
>>No they just give their whole sourcecode away..its not much i agree.<<
As English is not my native language i might not have made it very clear what i meant. what i meant is that their website does not contain a lot of information about what ZDESKTOP is all about. I was making no comment whatsoever about the actual product or the company itself … well i couldn’t because the web site does not tell a lot.
>>Your comment seems to be a rip off from a Troll, well at least it gives me that idea<<
uahhh … very original response without actually addressing the issue or my comment. Fact is that the idea of the logo is the same as from ubuntu … of course this might be pure coincident and as i stated it ‘seems’ to be.
Question still remains what are the benefits, features, vision etc. from all i can see the live cd (the idea not the actual implemetation) is not much different to say Knoppix.
From their website and posts on OSAlert i can’t see what rellay makes this project so different to other Linux Distribution. “Totally Virus Free Desktop Environment” and “computing system that is capable of maintaining and fixing itself without any need for human intervention” is not a lot to go by – what do they actually mnean … a new package management that looks for updates automatically etc.
>>Instead of making these anoying and useless comments you could go out and try to actually do something. Bah! <<
Yes you are right … i could go out and do sth., problem is that you are assuming a lot about me, like that i don’t do sth., or that i am a troll or that i should be doing sth. because i use OSS etc.
I’ve read that, what I want is some marketing free REAL information. What makes next generation? How is it supposed to be automated? Why is it supposed to be automated? If it’s automated, can I customize it?
I don’t buy into the virus free stuff. I don’t buy into the marketing speech. I just want some real Info.
There is a screenshot for JD4X on their sourceforge page. It is available here:
https://sourceforge.net/project/screenshots.php?group_id=33051
Their website is so amateurish.
A bunch on their site also:
http://web.singnet.com.sg/~tay06/Zesktopv01.html
Garret
I’ve used this mirror
http://puzzle.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/jdx/zerahstar-live-cd….
But once I got into the desktop – I got only three choices – XVIM, Opera Browser, and some X file manager.
Although there is java (Blackdown one), I did not see any java-app (swing?).
Am I doing something wrong?
I had to wget the jdx-install.jar and run it, it installed under my root, and now when I try to start it – I see only black gray screen… Duh.
Ctrl+Alt+F1/F2/F7 are working – so I can switch between console/graphics (but not much help).
Might be that it’s running from the LiveCD, and normal installation would work?
ZerahStar is only months old so there are lots of things missing as everyone has pointed out. We’ll improve as we move along. Thanks for those valid inputs, we’ll work on them. The JD4X project group and us are working together and sharing code to better improve on the ideas we hope to achieve together as an open source company and community.
We have planned a lot of features to incoorporate into JD4X but it will take time and money to implement. It is very difficult to do an open source startup business because it takes faith to open source all our hard work. We hope that the open source community will be more tolerant and more supportive of small companies like us who are trying to make a living and yet do what we love (innovating new and free software).
I’m (writer) funded by ZerahStar to give full time development efforts into JD4X to make it into a more robust system and I’m also the project lead for JD4X. We don’t mind more helping hands if you’re interested. Contribution says a lot more than words …
By the way, the logo is an original work from us.
So why I’m trying that… Well I would like to see fully Java Desktop System (I was expecting Solaris-10 would be like that, but it wasn’t). Also I don’t code in Java (I’m C/C++ only, but I’m interrested).
Now how I got it running on my Lifebook N.
1. I’ve burned the livecd-iso from sf.net, and loaded it.
2. Went into the command prompt, and downloaded install.jar (it’s only 24mb so it fits somehow in the ramfs – you probably still need enough memory – I have 512Mb)
3. Started java -jar install.jar
4. Installed into root
5. Went to /root/jd4x
6. Start java -jar jd4x.jar
7. It showed only gray-screen, nothing, so I pressed Ctrl+Backspace and i’ve shuted-down the XServer
8. I’ve started it again – e.g. “startx”
9. And now I have JD4X running on my laptop
What’s the difference between this and the other more established LiveCD distributions? The grahics and icons?
The mascot is simply horrendous, please do something about it.
Everyone seems to be too hang over with the Live CD. In our opinion every Linux Live CD is the same. Live CDs are not good for everyday use and is only useful for Windows users to try Linux or for system recovery (we did say that on our website). If you read the message on the login panel (on our Live CD), you would have realized that the Live CD is a demo that we use to help companies customize, distribute/demostrate their software products to customers.
It is not the Live CD we are promoting (yes, not even the graphics), it is the technology in the Live CD! A Java desktop that can run all your basic applications, no large libraries, all the benefits of Java, easy to customize/extend Java code to cater to your working environment, easier maintenance (no shared library hell), more Java also means less virus infections and etc … Future plans include webservices, peer to peer direct desktop connections (to friends), groupware features, maintenance automation and … (join the JD4X project mailing list to keep updated on our development) We believe that the desktop model can be more than a user driven piece of software. Our research is towards collaborating desktops to form semi-intelligent communication networks. That is where the idea of the next generation desktop come in.
Unfortunately we don’t plan to change our mascot anytime soon. We know that there will be those who think we are bull shitting, angry readers and trolls, so the best is to tune into our developments. We also do not intend to answer every question here only the reasonable ones.
Lighten up!
“In our opinion every Linux Live CD is the same. Live CDs are not good for everyday use and is only useful for Windows users to try Linux or for system recovery (we did say that on our website)”
thats completely wrong. We use Linux live cd’s to demonstrate apps quickly, rebuild system software, install software quickly, for potential migrations, for security systems and firewalls, setting up clusters and so on. learn about live cd’s first and learn about the diversity of linux live cds next
distrowatch.com has the list
Tay,
Yeah, whatever…
Let’s see how long your company can last..
We’ll try to last as long as we can … Thanks for the encouragment