freedesktop.org ( fd.o), formerly X Desktop Group ( XDG),
The project was founded by Havoc Pennington, a GNOME developer working for Red Hat in March 2000. Widely used open-source Desktop projects, such as GNOME, KDE Plasma, and Xfce, are collaborating with the freedesktop.org project. In 2006, the project released Portland Project (xdg-utils), a set of common interfaces for desktop environments.[ Portland points desktop Linux at $10 billion market , DesktopLinux.com, 11 October 2006] freedesktop.org joined the X.Org Foundation in 2019.
Hosted projects
freedesktop.org provides hosting for a number of relevant projects.
These include:
Windowing system and graphics
Software related to
and graphics in general
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Cairo, a vector graphics library with cross-device output support
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Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI), a Linux API to access the graphics hardware, used by X11, Wayland compositors, Mesa 3D, etc.
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Glamor,
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Mesa 3D, an implementation of several graphics APIs such as Vulkan and OpenGL
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Pixman,
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Poppler, a PDF rendering library
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Video Acceleration API
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Wayland, a protocol to replace X11; features: no frame tearing, lag, redrawing or flicker
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X.Org Server, the official reference implementation of the X11 protocol
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XCB, an Xlib replacement
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Xephyr, a display server
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wlroots, a modular Wayland compositor library
Other
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D-Bus, a message bus akin to DCOP (KDE 3) and Bonobo (GNOME 2)
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Elektra, a library for reading and writing configuration
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FreeType, a text rendering library
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fontconfig, a library for font discovery, name substitution, etc.
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fprint, a library for consumer fingerprint reader devices
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Geoclue, a geoinformation service
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GStreamer, a cross-platform multimedia framework
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GTK-Qt engine, a GTK+ 2 engine which uses Qt to draw the graphical control elements, providing the look and feel of KDE applications to GTK+2 applications
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HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer), a consistent cross-operating system layer; deprecated and replaced by udev
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kmscon, a userspace virtual console to replace the Linux console; uses the KMS driver and supports Unicode
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luit, a tool used by terminal emulators
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libinput,
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PulseAudio, a sound server frontend providing software mixing, network audio, and per application volume control
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PipeWire, a low-latency server for handling sandbox-friendly audio and video streams on Linux, which provides an implementation of PulseAudio, JACK, and ALSA as well as secure methods for Screenshot and Screencast on Wayland compositors
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Xft, anti-aliased fonts using the FreeType library, rather than the old X core fonts
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pkg-config, 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.
Base Directory Specification
XDG Base Directory Specification (XDG BDS) introduces a range of variables where user-specific files used by programs should be found.
[ XDG Base Directory Specification, freedesktop.org, accessed: 2021-05-15.] Many tools and applications utilize these variables by default.
User directories
Besides the variables mentioned below, XDG BDS also specifies that users' local binary files may be installed into . Systems compliant with the spec are expected to make this directory available in their CLI's environment variable.
- For user application's own data files
- Default to
- For user's app configuration files
- Default to
- For user-specific app session data, which should be stored for future reuse
- Default to
- May include logs, recently used files, application-specific information (e.g. window layout, views, opened files, undo history, etc.), akin to session data that should be stored by app by request of system session manager, like X session manager
- For user-specific apps cache files
- Default to
- For user-specific app runtime files like sockets which must not survive reboot and full logout/login cycles
System directories
- Colon-separated list of preference-ordered paths to search for data files in
- Default to
- The same as above but for config files
- Default to
Stated aims
The project aims to catch interoperability issues much earlier in the process. It is not for legislating formal standards. Stated goals include:
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Collect existing specifications, standards, and documents related to X desktop interoperability and make them available in a central location.
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Promote the development of new specifications and standards to be shared among multiple X desktops.
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Integrate desktop-specific standards into broader standards efforts, such as Linux Standard Base and the ICCCM.
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Work on the implementation of these standards in specific X desktops.
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Serve as a neutral forum for sharing ideas about X desktop technology.
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Implement technologies that further X desktop interoperability and free X desktops in general.
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Promote X desktops and X desktop standards to application authors, both commercial and volunteer.
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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.
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Provide source repositories (git
See also
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Comparison of source-code-hosting facilities
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Linux on the desktop
Sources
External links
