The Santa Clara, California-based company has also, as promised, bundled application development tools with the new version of JDS in the form of a free one-year developer tools subscription valued at $645, to foster developer interest in the platform.

The developer tool bundle includes the Sun Java Studio Standard integrated development environment, as well as the open source NetBeans IDE 3.6 development environment. In addition, Borland Software Corp announced that it would support JDS with its JBuilder Java development environment.

Borland was among nine new ISVs announcing support for the Linux-based desktop operating system. Others included desktop productivity software vendor CodeWeavers Inc and server-based computing software vendor Tarantella Inc.

As well as increased developer tools support, Release 2 of JDS also includes security and management enhancements, according to Sun, with the ability to lock down user desktops via centrally set policies and configurations through Java Desktop System Configuration Manager, Release 1.

There is also functionality for automatic update and patch distribution and remote desktop management and provisioning, via Java System Update Service, Sun Control Station 2.1 and Remote Desktop Takeover, as well as new anti-spam and pop-up blocker functionality in the latest version of the Mozilla browser.

JDS also includes the Gnome desktop environment, Sun’s StarOffice 7 desktop productivity application suite, the Evolution mail and groupware client and a variety of additional applications, and is based on Novell Inc’s SuSE Linux Desktop.

The half-price promotional price of $50 per desktop for JDS has been extended until December 2, 2004, making it 85% cheaper than Microsoft’s Windows, according to Sun’s calculations.