Now that Java has been open sourced under the GPL, even the most strict of the “free software only” distributions can start bundling it and integrating it into their Linux distributions out of the box. Indeed, many of them already have. In addition, the more ardent GPL supporters who have traditionally shunned Java can now embrace it as a first class citizen of the OSS world. Besides licensing Java under the GPL, The Swing team at Sun has also been hard at work improving the look and feel on the Linux desktop in Java 6. Take a look at the following two screen shots. One is the actual calculator from GNOME, and the other is a mock up in Swing using Netbeans and Matisse. Can you tell which is which?

Read this very interesting blog : Desktop Java and Desktop Linux

(gnome and swing)