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Freedesktop.org
Type of site
Software development management system
Available inEnglish
Created byHavoc Pennington
URLwww.freedesktop.org/wiki/ Edit this at Wikidata
CommercialNo
LaunchedMarch 2000; 24 years ago (2000-03)
Current statusOnline

freedesktop.org (fd.o) is a project to work on interoperability and shared base technology for free-software desktop environments for the X Window System (X11) (L21=L29) and Wayland on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. It was founded by Havoc Pennington from Red Hat in March 2000. The project's servers are hosted by Portland State University, which in turn are sponsored by HP, Intel and Google.[1]

Widely used open-source X-based desktop projects such as GNOME, KDE's Plasma Desktop, and Xfce—are collaborating with the freedesktop.org project. In 2006, the project released Portland 1.0 (xdg-utils), a set of common interfaces for desktop environments.[2] However, freedesktop.org is a "collaboration zone" for standards and specifications where users can freely discuss ideas, and not a formal standards organization.[3]

freedesktop.org was formerly known as the X Desktop Group,[4][5] and the abbreviation "XDG" remains common in their work.

According to an October 2018 article published by Phoronix, freedesktop.org will be officially joining the X.Org Foundation.[6]

Hosted projects

freedesktop.org provides hosting for a number of relevant projects.[7][8] These include:

Windowing system and graphics

Software related to windowing systems and graphics in general

Other

  • D-Bus, a message bus akin to DCOP (KDE 3) and Bonobo (GNOME 2)
  • Elektra, a library for reading and writing configuration
  • fontconfig is a library for font discovery, name substitution, etc.
  • fprint, a library for the consumer fingerprint reader devices
  • Geoclue, a geoinformation service.[11]
  • GStreamer is a cross-platform multimedia framework.
  • GTK-Qt engine, a GTK+ 2 engine which uses Qt to draw the graphical control elements, providing the same look and feel of KDE applications to GTK+2 applications.
  • HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) is a consistent cross-operating system layer; it has been deprecated and replaced by udev.
  • kmscon, userspace virtual console to replace Linux console, uses KMS driver and supports Unicode
  • luit, a tool used by terminal emulators
  • libinput,[12] a library to handle input devices in Wayland compositors and to provide a generic X.Org input driver. It provides device detection, device handling, input device event processing and abstraction to minimize the amount of custom input code compositors need to provide the common set of functionality that users expect
  • PulseAudio is a sound server frontend meant to provide software mixing, network audio, and per application volume control.
  • systemd is a comprehensive init framework to start and manage services and sessions meant to replace older init models.
  • Xft, anti-aliased fonts using the FreeType library, rather than the old X core fonts.
  • pkg-config is a helper program used to generate flags for compiler and linker to include necessary libraries.

Also, Avahi (a free Zeroconf implementation) started as a fd.o project but has since become a separate project.

Stated aims

The project aims to catch interoperability issues much earlier in the process. It is not for legislating formal standards. Stated goals include:

  • Collect existing specifications, standards and documents related to X desktop interoperability and make them available in a central location.
  • Promote the development of new specifications and standards to be shared among multiple X desktops.
  • Integrate desktop-specific standards into broader standards efforts, such as Linux Standard Base and the ICCCM.
  • Work on the implementation of these standards in specific X desktops.
  • Serve as a neutral forum for sharing ideas about X desktop technology.
  • Implement technologies that further X desktop interoperability and free X desktops in general.
  • Promote X desktops and X desktop standards to application authors, both commercial and volunteer.
  • Communicate with the developers of free operating system kernels, the X Window System itself, free OS distributions, and so on to address desktop-related problems.
  • Provide source repositories (git),[13] and CVS[14] web hosting, Bugzilla, mailing lists, and other resources to free software projects that work toward the above goals.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Freedesktop". Freedesktop.org. Retrieved 27 April 2017.
  2. ^ Portland points desktop Linux at $10 billion market Archived October 12, 2006, at the Wayback Machine, DesktopLinux.com, 11 October 2006
  3. ^ "Freedesktop". Freedesktop.org. Retrieved 27 April 2017.
  4. ^ "X desktop group".
  5. ^ Archived 2001-02-02 at the Wayback Machine
  6. ^ "FreeDesktop.org Might Formally Join Forces With The X.Org Foundation".
  7. ^ "FreedesktopProjects". freedesktop.org. Retrieved 2013-09-22.
  8. ^ "Software". freedesktop.org. Retrieved 2013-09-22.
  9. ^ "Glamor". freedesktop.org. 17 May 2013. Retrieved 31 October 2015.
  10. ^ "Pixman". pixman.org.
  11. ^ Wallen, Jack (6 December 2011). "DIY: Get top-quality open source security tools in one distro". News, Tips, and Advice for Technology Professionals. Retrieved 2019-06-21.
  12. ^ "[ANNOUNCE] libinput 0.4.0". freedesktop.org. 2014-06-24.
  13. ^ "freedesktop.org git". Gitweb.freedesktop.org. Retrieved 2013-09-22.
  14. ^ "ViewVC Repository Listing". WebCVS.freedesktop.org. Archived from the original on 2013-10-08. Retrieved 2013-09-22.

Sources

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