1 / 15

Freedesktop

Biju Chacko www.xfce.org. Freedesktop.org. Introduction. Who am I? Disclaimer These slides are based on those used by Havoc Pennington to give a talk at GUADEC. X Platform. Win32 Platform OS X Platform X/UNIX Platform. Projects involved in X platform. XFree86 X.org freedesktop.org

fleur
Download Presentation

Freedesktop

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Biju Chacko www.xfce.org Freedesktop.org

  2. Introduction • Who am I? • Disclaimer • These slides are based on those used by Havoc Pennington to give a talk at GUADEC

  3. X Platform • Win32 Platform • OS X Platform • X/UNIX Platform

  4. Projects involved in X platform • XFree86 • X.org • freedesktop.org • Other X efforts • GTK+, Qt • GNOME, KDE • VCL, XUL, WINE

  5. freedesktop.org Background • From the mission statement: freedesktop.org was formed in March 2000 to encourage cooperation among open source desktops for the X Window System. • Highlights: • Open source only • X Window System only • Broad goal "encouraging cooperation"

  6. Activities • Keep specifications, proposals, and standards in a central location. • Informal forum for desktops to coordinate specifications and code. • CVS, web, and mailing list hosting for interoperability projects.

  7. Why? • Developers and ISVs should be able to use the development environment of their choice without limiting their userbase to users of a particular desktop environment. • Users should be able to choose the best applications, regardless of their desktop environment. • Interfaces between applications should be well-documented and well-defined, so they can be supported compatibly over the long term. (More ...)

  8. Why? (Contd) • Modularity, documentation - it's just good engineering. • Choice is good; users and developers should be able to choose the environment and applications they like. • Fragmentation is bad; choices should not come in bundles. If I choose Windows, I should not have to choose Internet Explorer.

  9. Could we just pick one? • What if we had only one major desktop environment? • Hasn't happened in last 4 years; not looking likely anytime soon. • WINE, OpenOffice, Mozilla, and many Qt/GTK+ applications would still exist. • People would not bother to document and specify many things that should be documented and specified. • We would lose a lot of smart developers. • All our eggs in one basket, with no motivating competition.

  10. Can vendors solve the problem on their own? • What if vendors do integration, from free software pieces? • Leads to lots of patches/forking • Worse, patches/forking in API/ABI • In many cases just not feasible due to amount of code involved • Means that open source apps can't use the platform

  11. XEMBED Protocol "System tray" protocol Thumbnail/preview system Menu system Message bus IPC system (D-BUS) Icon themes Startup notification EWMH Complete or In-progress • X Window System and ICCCM • New font system (fontconfig/Xft) • Clipboard behavior documentation • Drag-and-drop specification • Desktop entry specification

  12. ~/Desktop, ~/Documents, etc. Sound/multimedia framework (including sound server) IPC framework VFS (same URIs known to all apps) Accessibility UI guidelines? Work needed • Render engine and corresponding X extensions • Other X extensions • Hardware abstraction library • Registry of cut-and-paste and DND types • MIME system • Configuration/manageability framework • Help indexing

  13. Formal standards • As specifications mature and we have two interoperating implementations, ideally they would be rewritten more rigorously and formally approved by Free Standards Group, IETF, or other standards bodies. • FSG efforts are underway. Core desktop developers lack time to rewrite and formalize specifications, dedicated standards body employees and volunteers needed.

  14. How can you help? • Demand that applications be orthogonal to the environment. Hold your distribution, desktop environment developers, etc. accountable. File bug reports! • Help us rearrange the organization of the community to encourage building the platform as it should be. • If you have the knowledge, help out with code and specifications. • If you have the influence, encourage resource allocation to address platform issues. • Sponsor focused platform summits between key developers in a given area.

  15. Questions?

More Related