“With its acquisition of Star division and its flagship
product, the StarOffice 5.1 productivity suite, Sun finally has an
answer to the perennial question that’s asked by PC users in search
of an alternative to Windows. The persuasiveness of Sun’s
answer remains to be seen, but that answer deserves to be
considered by business computing systems buyers.”
“When Sun launched Java and took on Microsoft for the role of
corporate desktop architect, Sun hoped that an operating-
system-agnostic application platform-specifically, the Java-enabled
browser-would level the playing field for operating systems such as
OS/2 and Linux (and even, ahem, Solaris).”
“Any of these alternative operating systems surpasses Windows 95
and Windows 98 and even, in some cases, Windows NT in key
areas-whether we’re talking about the deep and consistent
object-based desktop environment of OS/2’s Workplace Shell, the
64-bit scalability of Solaris, or the low cost and rapid evolution
of Linux.”