While the betas do have some small annoyances, I think it is a big step in the right direction.
Small annoyances? I'm sorry, but I think that is an drastic understatement. I am a big fan of Sun and have been so for a long time. However, I have to admit that I think they could have done a much better job with this product. I am primarily a Gnome user, but the JDS is marketed as a "Desktop System" and we must all admit that KDE is definitely going for that desktop environment to pick up where Windows leaves off. So how does sun explain completely omitting KDE and even its libraries in the JDS? Right off the bat they are cutting out a good 50% of the applications available for the platform. I think this is a ridiculous move. The least they could have done was include the libraries. Why would they do that? And as for Sid's question, maybe you could shed some light:
"so where's Linux/SPARC on Sun's roadmap"
Where is it? Linux compiles fine on SPARC architecture, so I don't see why they wouldn't include it. But in checking the site I can't find any information on specific architectures. Am I correct in assuming that the lack of architecture-specific information means that JDS will run on all Linux-able archs?