Is it a suitable language to develop desktop applications in

This is a hugely debateable question and will probably continue to do so, java right now is able to be used for desktop applications, but some run really slow, i.e. Java Forte (a java ide).

Java as all kinds of ide,ranging from forte, visual j++, jbuilder, visual cafe....

once java is in byte code, which is what the compiler turns it into, you are good to go on any platform, that is the greatness of the jvm.