Since Java 6 there is a class java.awt.Desktop. There are some nice methods but the class is not supported on all platforms. The methods java.awt.Desktop.getDesktop() throw an java.lang.UnsupportedOperationException: Desktop API is not supported on the current platform on some platforms. Or the method java.awt.Desktop.isDesktopSupported() return false.
I know that it work on Windows XP, Windows 2003 and also Windows Vista. The question is on which platform is it not supported?