At LinuxWorld last month, Sun rolled out plans to make all its development tools available on Linux by the end of 2004, including environments for both Java and C/C++ developers.

Sun's Java Studio Standard tools are already available for Linux. Jeff Anders, group marketing manager, said that Sun will also produce a Linux edition of Sun Studio, its kit for C/C++ developers, by the end of this year. Until now, Sun Studio has only been available for Solaris.

Also set for Linux-enablement in 2004 are the following Java-based tools: Java Studio Creator; Java Studio Enterprise; Java Studio Mobility; and versions 3.6 and 4.0 of the NetBeans open source IDE.

According to Anders, Sun is gearing the PC-based Sun Studio at corporate developers who are accustomed to working with graphical Windows-based environments such as Visual Basic.

Anders also pointed to a dirth of easy-to-use commercial C/C++ tools for Linux. Sun is working closely with Linux developers on the PC product.

"This is Sun's first shot at this space, and we want to make sure we get things right," Anders maintained.

With Sun Studio for Linux, Sun will target corporate markets such as finance, health care, and telecommunications.

Java Studio Creator, on the other hand, is a new graphical environment for Java developers. Formerly codenamed Project Rave, these Java tools are now in beta.

Sun expects to release Java Studio Enterprise as an add-on to the Java Enterprise System. Along with the Java Desktop System, previously codenamed Project Mad Hatter, Java Studio Enterprise and the Java Enterprise System--a set of tools for application deployment--formerly made up Sun's Project Orion.

Initially, Sun's Linux-enabled development tools are supporting Red Hat and SUSE Linux only. "We also want to leave the door open, though, to other Linux distributions," Anders noted.