Is it a JVM ?

No. It runs over a standard JVM. Because some low-level APIs are required, it should be at least 1.4. Typicaly, we use Sun jre 1.4.

How fast is JDistro ?

Fast enough. Speed is good. The apps are launched a lot faster and run more or less at the same speed than in a separate JVM. We have no benchmarks but we think two heavy apps run faster in JDistro than in two separate JVMs. Of course that depends on your amount of memory.

-ms512M -mx512M ;-)

Can you actually run non-java programs ?

JDistro is not designed for running native apps. But you can.

• You can run textual ones in a terminal
• You can run X ones using the WeirdX server (which runs as a module of JDistro)
• You can not run other native apps (win$, ...) inside the desktop but you can launch them outside.

Are entities purpose-built things for jdistro ?

Yes. Entites is the standard way to represent your applications. They can be hand-written or generated from JNLP description file, JAR file or Applet HTML file. They are equivalent to the .desktop files in GNOME or KDE and in fact follow the same format. We try to be compliant with the freedesktop.org standards.

How hard is it to write apps for ?

Not hard at all. In fact, there is nothing to do: any java app should run unchanged. This is one of the greatest advantage of JDistro over other java desktops.