Several languages – notably Forth – have come with their own skimpy operating environment over the years so that no executive was needed to run them, and now, reports our sister publication Unigram X, Sun Microsystems Inc is working on an operating- system-like version of Java code-named Kona, which will remove the need for using Windows to run Java applets, running on Internet terminals and – presumably – anything for which there is a Java interpreter. The company says Kona could replace Windows completely. Such a thing apparently falls within the domain of the recently-formed JavaSoft unit and would have to be written in Java.. Sun said any realization was years away.
