IBM in Talks to Buy Sun?

Yes, Jacek, I've the same setup as Jaroslav and fonts are pretty neat. I presume it depends largely on the distro / Java version / whatever combination.

In any case, as it has been said, NetBeans is not going to disappear. In the worst case IBM can drop funding, but can't make it vanish since is GPL. There are people willing to maintain it in case funding is dropped. I bet it's the same with GlassFish and other products.

"Maybe my point of view is clouded by the fact that NB still looks like crap on Linux...how many years is it gonna take for Sun to fix font rendering on Linux......"

It's all subjective, of course, but what are you smoking? 

For me, Netbeans looks gorgeous on Linux, whether I'm running Ubuntu, openSUSE, or PCLinuxOS (my fav), or whether I have Nebeans use native LAF (gtk), or Nimubs.

 I'm guessing that you might be seeing jagged fonts, even with using JDK6.  I do too, unless I go into (in the case of Ubuntu), "Prefereneces" -> "Appearence" -> "Fonts" tab, and click on the radio button next to "Use sub-pixel smoothing (or hinting - can't remember which, at the moment)".  That's for a Gnome evnironment.  If you are using KDE, go to the KDE control center, then select "Appearance & Themes", then "Fonts", then select "Enabled" for " "Use anti-aliasing:".

 You see, on Linux, Swing apps won't use anti-aliasing unless the native desktop environment is configured to use it.

I think IBM buying Sun is the best thing that could happen to Java now.  Look at the financials, Sun is the Dead Man Walking of the IT industry:  On Oct 9, 2008, Sun supposedly had close to $3.5 billion in the bank (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/sun-microsystems-a-lesson-in-failed-cosmetic-surgery/), yesterday, there were  $1.6 billion left (http://techpulse360.com/2009/03/18/ibm-to-buy-sun-microsystems/).  So in five months, Sun burned through $1.9 billion in cash, meaning they could be completely out of cash in July, give or take a month or two (yes, this calculation may be oversimplified, but I stand by the trend).

So let's see, where does Sun revenue come from, looking at the last quarter?  60% come from server and storage hardware that go to financial institutions and telecoms, mostly in the U.S., and that was down 14% year-to-year (http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/investor/earnings_releases/Q209_SLD.pdf, slide 4).  In this recession with a lot of banks expected to go under soon, this is only going to get a lot worse.  Plus, starting today, the phones in all Sun accounts will ring off the hook because the Sun competitors will play the FUD card and try to get customers to switch away from Sun products.  Finally, a lot of resumes from Sun guys probably went out to Google today (or, dare I say: Microsoft?).  No matter whether this rumour is true or not, it just accelerated Sun's demise alot.

So don't you think that big, conservative customers feel safer when IBM backs Java, a company with deep pockets, not a company on life support like Sun?  And from all companies out there, IBM as the second-biggest software company in the world has the most to lose if Java goes under.  Look at their five software brands (http://www-01.ibm.com/software) - three of them run on Java: WebSphere is Java + Eclipse OSGI kernel, Lotus (on the client) is Java + Eclipse RCP + Open Office fork (and probably Java + Eclipse OSGI kernel on the server), Rational is Java + Eclipse.  Out of pure self interest, IBM will maintain Java, given that (like Linux) it's the one thing that runs across all their systems - mainframe, PowerPC, X86/64.

So given the choice between Sun just going bankrupt, being bought by IBM or being bought by somebody else, I gladly chose IBM.

What will happen to  Harmony and SWT?

Java Module System versus OSGI ?

Karsten, you're right about Sun's bad conditions and the need of a financial operation to save it. So, perhaps being bought by IBM is better than going bankrupt. I'm the first that was sure that Sun would have been bought very soon. Frankly, IBM is only the second worst buyer after Microsoft. Yes, big customers that are acquainted to elephantiac, locked-in products such as those in IBM portfolio might feel more comfortable, because they are used in wasting money in expensive consulting and integration. All the rest of the world probably doesn't feel better.

IBM wants to kill all open source communities by buying sun realy IBM close all gates but it self ,if this happend

it will be graet loss for all it communities

@Rainer Eschen

You're basing your opinion of Sun on decisions made by their former management team almost 10 years ago, and a misunderstanding of their open source strategy.

Go to Jonathan Schwartz's blog.   His last 4 entries explain the strategy clearly.    The strategy will generate tons of revenue.

I would feel much better about this if Eclipse wasn't such a piece of junk. And while I have problems with Swing, the SWT is far worse. At least Swing seperates the model from the view.