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Big Names Back Possible Linux Standards
Sean Feryl writes "Adobe Systems, IBM, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Novell, RealNetworks and Red Hat are all backing the new Linux standards effort led by the Free Standards Group to form standards for key components of Linux desktop software, including libraries, application runtime and install time. The goal is to encourage the development of more applications for the Linux platform. 'With this complex and costly development and support environment, independent software vendors may choose not to target the Linux desktop, leading to reduced choice for end users and an inability to compete with proprietary operating systems', the group said." Also covered on FoxNews.
Adobe? Does this mean Photoshop could be on the cards?
(and yes, I've used the Gimp, and no, it doesn't do what Photoshop can do)
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
they can all decide to put similar files in similar places?
/etc/X11/
Not
I LVOE IT!
Also covered on FoxNews.
Has the payche(ck|que) from Rupert Murdoch arrived yet?
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Nothing new is "coming" to linux from adobe.
Ever.
It simply means they wont discontinue support for thier ancient version of acrobat reader 4.something for linux.
Yet.
I agree, I think that standards such as directory structures and all that. It might not be as important. But that is a start. It takes too damn long someimes to figure out where X is on my system. It should be here, but its over there.
I also think that this would be good for having a strong divx like layer. I love linux, but there seems to be too many fads, and flavors-of-the-months for things like that. Games and all that would love something that is common to all sytems.
As long as the layer isnt imbedded into the kernel. L)
MMMMMMMMMM Standards
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
Is that there are so many to choose from....
They prefer Java as the write-once, run anywhere solution.
It looks like companies, specifically Adobe, are realizing that people want to switch from windows to linux, but a big problem is still the native applications that are available. This is the long time chicken and egg problem facing linux growth. Adobe reader 7 for linux is great and works just as good as the windows counterpart so hopefully we'll see photoshop and the other parts of CS2 ported to linux. And if microsoft doesn't want to port their applications to linux (for obvious reasons) then I think people can still find good alternatives to their programs and use programs like photoshop that they are familiar with.
The more big companies get involved in forcing standards, the less the single developer at home has to say about what happens with the OS.
One of the strengths that Linux has is that anyone can write good code and alter the direction. If Money driven corporations start calling shots, then politics come into play, and they start promoting/forcing standards that are advantageous to how they believe the market should be, or standards that work best with their business model.
This is really a wolf in sheep's clothing.
I'm probably going to catch H. E. double hockey sticks for this, but it's about frigging time!
A. lack of standardized libraries across the Linux board is a big problem, I hope they release at least 3 three standards though, Server, Desktop/Workstation/Laptop, and Embedded.
-manno
P.S. Did you know OO.o2.0's spell check has the correct spelling of "frigging"?
I find it interesting and somewhat disturbing that the only way to achieve broad acceptance of an operating system is to offer the product with as few options as possible. An gross exaggeration? Yes, but consider this. The article states, "Developing applications for Linux desktops is a complicated endeavor now because of significant differences between two prevailing versions, called GNOME (GNU Network Object Model Environment) and KDE (K Desktop Environment)." So what we're saying is that an OS cannot be accepted by the masses if it has a choice of desktop environments, because it's hard to develop for two desktop environments? You know, a window is a window is a window. Is the code needed to create a window not abstracted from the window manager? Is what you display within the window dependent on the window manager? I don't see why this is so hard. Someone explain it to me. I know you will. :-)
Ouch! The truth hurts!
I find all this talk of "Linux standards" amusing. To me it appears like POSIX, etc, all over again and I expect it will have about just as much success and impact as POSIX and friends did in standardising Un*x.
The first problem here is most of the "new blood" involved weren't around to witness the mistakes of Un*x in the early 1990s and so Linux has been as different as it can be whilst still being POSIX compliant.
What everyone needs to understand is that standards will never deliver what people are claiming they will.
What we should do is just accept that RedHat, Ubuntu, SuSE, Caldera, Debian, etc, are all different operating systems that happen to share a common source code -base-.
In the end, I expect that the standard will be nice but "not enough" because there will be "differences" in key places to allow each vendor to provide more functionality, expand, etc.
Can't the others just copy for compatibility? Yes and they can do so today but they don't because of different ideals.
All that said, I would love it if the mechanism to install a new software package and have it enabled at bootup was the same on _all_ Linux platforms. Unfortunately, today, it isn't and given the gratuitous differnces in how this is done, I'm not confident that it ever will be the same everywhere.
It is generally good news! This kind of cooperation might finally create some serious competition for M$Windows. On the other hand, I can see how these efforts can be hindered, just as new blue ray DVD has been. Also, I wonder if all the players will try to stick their freebie-leading-to-purchase "features" into this new desktop environment.
How many of the distros will follow the standard? I know that it is commercially important for the major distros to follow the standard, but newer and more innovative distibutions may forgo them. If you spend much time running Red Hat or SuSE, you can get frustrated sitting down and attempting to edit scripts on Debian, or at least that had been a problem in the past. Gentoo seems to follow its own path, and I haven't spent more than a few hours working with Slackware in five years. These are just a few of the different approaches to linux file management (especially the rc scripting). Then there are the various package management systems, updaters, and user scripts. I haven't had time to play with Ubantu, but it would take me time to work through the directory tree to see how things are arranged as well.
Linux standards are a great idea, but I don't know how many of the dozens of distros will follow it.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
i hope everything pulls through with this deal.. i remember reading an article a while back regarding Macromedia's possible development with Linux.. what happened to that whole mess?? did they back out already? if not, why the hell aren't they helping the FSG ??
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
From TFA:
I'm all for a good set of standards; installation already varies across apts, rpms, and make installs. The article raises the issue of a standard desktop installation method, question is, will we see yet another install method?
How will this impact server systems and installation methods (apt/rpm) for non-desktop systems? What about software that operates desktop framework components and what you'd typically consider 'server' stuff...will there be two installation methods, one for the desktop and another for the service?
Cross-desktop compatibility...
I'm sure everyone here knows of KDE and Gnome as the two most popular desktops - so will these standards just be targeted at these? Or just one of these? What about the (near infinite) variety of other windowing systems - the only common thread is X-Windows (and not always that...what's about Sun's JDS Java Desktop System?)
Packaging Photoshop for linux will always be difficult because of this variety - Adobe can only support so many variations. The only way this will work is if they standardise on a single desktop system, killing off the others.
TFA talks about 'the first specification for Linux desktop software' and 'It plans to give compliant applications a "Linux Standard Base Desktop" certification mark.'. This does indeed suggest the death knell is sounding for variety on the linux desktop.
acroread7 does not work with 2 screens and an ati-card! Tried to find adobes bug-report system but gave up. It's the same bug that openoffice had earlier but got fixed.
get the screenwidht: 17"
get the resolutionwidth: 2560 (the width of 2 screens)
calculate how the page should be drawn -> draw the page 2 times wider than its supposed to be -> priceless!
Furthermore it does not follow ANY guidelines regarding buttons, neither kdes nor gnomes. The whole idea with a GUI is for the icons to be recognizable, whish is easier if there is consistency among the different applications. Adobe is not the master of this.
TFA doesn't mention exactly _what_ will be included in the standard.
will standardize around one single desktop manager in detriment of the other ?
i hope so. and before you flame me, let me explain why: look and feel.
if KDE and gnome agreed around a common layout for things like file selector and other more used dialogs, i wouldn't mind. but that's not the case. gnome's dialogs are completelly diferent than KDE's, wich is a real pain sometimes.
other thing i'd like to see implemented as a standard: printing.
mozilla suite have it's own printing dialog that can't detect printers without xprint, wich have to be manually configured (ie, change a config file) to match the printer's default resolution or it will print out of scale pages. GIMP also have it's own, uber complicated, print dialog which looks like nothing that exists for KDE...
well, i can handle all of this, but can i say the same of my mother ??? _HECK NO!!!_ and i'm sure most of the potential photoshop users wouldn't want to deal with all those "choices" either.
choice is good, for the ones who want, or like, it. for everyone else, standards.
What ? Me, worry ?
what's that? I mean, what botanicals do you suppose are in it?
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I think that there should be multiple levels of the LSB standards. I think there should be an initial LSB filesystem standard, and then above that, there should be an LSB layout standard, and then an LSB application location standard, an LSB standard for package management (rpms, ick!), and further on there should be the LSB desktop environment for X layout.
I don't think the LSB should be, or have one standards base to rule them all. They should start several layers, so a distro could claim that they meet LSB Standards 1 (we'll call this the filesystem standard), and they also meet LSB Standards 2 (which is the application layout standard), but then the distro could claim that they don't met LSB standards 3 and 4 (which are, X, and their environment layouts) so a user can decide what he/she is getting in their distro. I think its stupid for the LSB to come out with the one end all standard for all forms of Linux.
YOU'RE WINNER !
Another lame blog
Does anyone know how Dizzney solved the color calibration problem with PS/Wine?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The reason apps are not ported from Windows and OS X to Linux is that it is a poor use of resources. Why port apps to an OS that such a small fraction of users use? LSB will not solve that problem.
Linux needs to gain popularity from the ground up, not the top down. Especially given the nature of F/OSS and community driven development, the Linux community should not be looking to big software companies for handouts. How much would Adobe have to sell Linux Photoshop for in order to make money off of it?
Yes, I know there are arguments that companies should be trying to steer their users toward Linux, but without an apparent bottom-line payoff, this will be the exception, not the rule.
How is using euphemistic expression better than cursing? Just trying to understand the thought process - your meaning is clear, and the intent is the same, so I'm not sure exactly what you saved there.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Let me guess - this means they would like everyone to else to do things the way they were intending to do things anyway. I.E. - a "do it my way" standard.
No thanks. I already have a standard: Debian. Everyone else should just use Debian. This will establish standards for key components of Linux desktop software, including libraries, application runtime and install time. The goal is to encourage the development of more applications for the Linux platform.
Linux needs to gain popularity from the ground up
It is happening at the moment very rapidly. Just read Ubuntu forums and see. Many ordinary (not nerdy) Windows users are switching to Ubuntu.
We're seeing posts like this every single day.
It's the non-standard nature of the directory tree that gets on my nerves. /bin, /usr/bin, /usr/share/bin, /usr/local/bin, /usr/local/share/bin... Aargh!
I have not seen /usr/share/bin, /usr/local/share/bin. These are grotesque. /usr/local makes an inconvenient and ugly garbage dump IMHO, just because of the length of the name. I much prefer /opt/. You can get long paths this way, but tentative and potentially disruptive packages stay segregated. My Gentoo machine doesn't have any of this confusion. You might complain that /usr/bin is overused. But the rc infrastructure is the best I've seen. Lightyears better than RedHat. I think because Gentoo drops all pretense of trying to support graphical system administration they have done a great job making text base configuration as good as it can be.
an ill wind that blows no good
The more big companies get involved in forcing standards, the less the single developer at home has to say about what happens with the OS.
And the more that single developers insist on trotting out oddball standards for everything that comes to mind, the less they'll be able to complain about business users not adopting Linux.
If Money driven corporations start calling shots
They're called "users with money to spend." You're confusing the vendors with the people the vendors work for (users). No happy users, no vendor profit. No profit, no vendor at all. No big vendors, no one for large business users to trust with their IT services/support... except maybe Microsoft.
standards that work best with their business model
And without customers wanting (and paying for) what they do, they wouldn't have any business at all, and you wouldn't have Adobe or IBM, or anyone else backing the better things that some "single developers" do come up with. But when a standard makes sense, and is adopted by both business users and the companies that serve them, that usually triggers both a large wave of additional development around that standard, and wider use of the resulting platform/apps by businesses. You can't get broad use at the office (and thus an urge for people to switch on the machine they use at home, too) without standards backed by the people that serve those businesses.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Yes, yes, everybody has an agenda. Only some of those everybodies have very big bank accounts and a very narrow mission in life. Should we get out the sticks?
Redmond - Not to be outdone, Microsoft published it's own Linux standards today. Features included among the specifications include "arbitary remote code execution", "automated non-uniform kernel panics" and "psuedo-posix compliance". Microsoft plans to base thier new "Visto" OS based on these new standards later this year under the "free as in not" softwaer license.
If everybody could adopt a single file format to generate menus from, I'd be thrilled. I hate setting up my desktop, all over again, just because I am trying out a new window manager. It's hard to sell potential desktop Linux adopters on "the flexibility of Linux is a strength" when something as trivial as this is so cumbersome. Flexibility/choice can be a strength, but it can also be a PITB. The Free Desktop folks have a suggested standard for this...who is using it?
Constitutionally Correct
I imagine Adobe has little use for the GPL, and even if they did port, it would be buggy and weird and frustrating for most Linux devs.
Just a guess though, IANAAI (I am not an Adobe insider)
I'm wondering how the big games that exist on linux have managed thus fari if the lack of standardisation is really this big a deal.
How to use coral cache: http://slashdot.org.nyud.net:8090/~oscartheduck
Even if the standard demanded GNOME (I don't know), this wouldn't mean that there may not be KDE installed as well. It would just mean that GNOME has to be installed to be standard conforming. :-)
It would probably mean that commercial apps would generally be GNOME apps. But since GNOME applications should run just fine under KDE, that should not be too much of a problem.
Of course TrollTech would surely prefer KDE as standard
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
A lot of people have mentioned the problems of which GUI these companies would write applications for. What if someone were to create wrapper around both KDE and Gnome GUI libraries that applications could use, and would detect which GUI was currently being used. That way, applications that these companies make could work no matter which GUI a user prefers.
Keep in mind that I don't use linux and am only somewhat familiar with appliction programming (I'm a web developer).
Technoli
It's good to see companies taking interest in helping Linux (which is strange coming from me) Standardizing certain things in Linux can help newcomers to less-dependantly setup and customize their OS. When I first started using Linux, certain things like the location of shared libraries, INIT runlevels (Debian), source compilation, and startup scripts used to cause me headaches when trying to do simple things like disable graphical login. If I was not so determined to migrate to Linux, I probably would still be using only windows, one determined enough to scour google and linuxquestions.org can learn alot about how the OS works internally and externally. Standards can help keep new, less determined users from dumping Linux in that it will be easier for them to do what they want while having to do less studying and independant troubleshooting. Hopefully standardization will help to increase usability of Linux without too many negative effects, but the beauty of open source is the OS can quickly recover if too many problems occur. Linux will survive!
The problem is really that people shouldn't have the mindset of writing raw GUI calls anymore.
Once you've build your web broswer or UIMS, you are then just sending message back and forth between your presentation layer and application. This should almost be a no-brainer, given the rich XML examples out there. Can anyone point to some examples?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UIMS (User Interface Mgmt system)
Please explain what "politics" you're referring to and how they are not in play right now. Some of the biggest businesses in the world are already heavily involved with Linux kernel development. Last I remember, people who don't like the strongly copylefted GNU GPL dismissed it in part on the grounds it was a "political" license (yet they also fail to explain precisely what that means and how that is a bad thing). Also, explain how the license of the Linux kernel (GNU GPL v2 plus linking permission, if I recall correctly) would be somehow obviated by increased involvement by business along the lines the GPL grants.
Free software isn't anti-business, it never was. The free software movement encourages businesses to participate in the freedoms we're all granted so long as they do so as equals, not entities with superior rights. I don't see how organizing to set standards for these issues endangers our software freedom.
Digital Citizen
If it's all statically linked, what will end users do to fix the inevitable library security holes? Shared library: Install patched library once. Static: Wait and hope for app to release a patched binary.
Giving up your software freedom for some features is unwise. The free software community would not be where it is if the people who wrote and distribute free software behaved as you're advocating now. Proprietors would love to tell us how we can do the jobs they will allow us to do with computers. I understand why you would be attracted to features you miss—you've never been taught to value software freedom for its own sake hence you see nothing wrong with trading it away—but it is better to improve the GIMP to meet your needs.
Digital Citizen
Finally some guys with weight say it aloud. It's a pity it's just happening now. What's more disturbing is that once again FOSS people could not do it by themselves but it had to be a group of corporations. So revealing, so sad.
How can you say "Bye bye KDE" when Trolltech is part of the FSG?
When I started with Linux a few years ago I didn't had much knowledge about the choice for a Desktop. I was pointed to one from my default Red Hat installation and used it (GNOME).
But over the time I figured out how immature it was. Software was not working correctly, crashing or had weak features compared to the counterparts found on Windows or they were simply incomplete, slammed together in a hurry and not aesthetical pleasing.
I then switched my distributions only to see alternatives and came across to SUSE who offered me a Desktop that was called KDE and over the time I settled myself with KDE and saw how mature it was. I was able to do all my tasks that I knew from Windows. Could draw diagrams using KIVIO, use the KOFFICE suite and felt confortable with it.
Not just that, the Desktop was complete, mature and offered all the powerful tools that I knew from former Windows times. I recommend everyone (companies, education, corporate, users and random other people) to go with KDE - primarily because it is more polished, has the better technology beneath it and has all the powerful applications to get serious stuff done. Unlike GNOME, KDE otoh is complete and can be considered a serious replacement for Windows.
It was that the Linux zealots hindered them.
Standards are like highways. A reasonable person would say: "Thank goodness they made a highway in the middle of this jungle".
A Linux zealot would say: "Highways hinder our freedom! If we don't follow their way, we can go WHENEVER we want! (grabs tree-rope) AAAaaaa-AaaaAa-Aahhh!!!!"
Get the idea? Linux zealots often confuse "order" with "restrictions", and "chaos" with "freedom".
How about using the following Identification mechanism?
...
LSB-2005-Desktop-GNOME
LSB-2005-Desktop-KDE
LSB-2005-Server
LSB-2005-Embedded
Update yearly at most - I don't want to deal with shorter version cycles!
Then:
LINUXBASE=LSB-2004 # Tell the world you want to use an old environment
>lsb-check # Hey the old environement is installed
ok
runOldApp # Now I can ENSURE backwards compatability
LINUXBASE=LSB-2005-Desktop-GNOME # Now set env back for my newer app
>myapp --config lsb # Ask my app what it needs
LSB-2005-Desktop
Hey my app needs either desktop to run.
>myapp --config mips # This would be nice too for hardware checks
2500
Oh it needs a lot of power
>myapp --config mem
128M
And a lot of memory
>myapp --config opengl
optional
And it can use 3D.....
about a month ago (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/21/13392 11&tid=185)?
I thought so. I said it then and I'll say it now: This is pointless until all of the major distros are on board. If you create standards and those standards get adopted by only some distros, then what you end up with is further fragmentation and your "standards" aren't.
Something like this is pretty well inevitable. It's not hard to see why. Bear in mind that big software outfits don't want their stuff to just run on Linux, they want it to run well and with a guaranteed "user experience". Both are deal-breakers for the Adobes of this world. It's also important to remember that top-class and easy to use software development tools are very important to the success of a platform. Microsoft were very clever in getting this aspect down pat for Windows.
And, hey, no one has to certify to this LSB or anything else in that line. If you don't want to, you'll very probably find that a swathe of apps won't run on your distro (in a few years' time) and many of your users will go elsewhere, but hey that is fine too. It's called consequences, and growing up to take responsibility for them.
I guess it's possible to try to influence change to the platform as the big money moves in, or to marginalize yourself by ranting at the world. But for good or ill, change of the kind envisioned in this article is clearly going to happen.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
Most of us here know that the choice of desktop systems, KDE, Gnome, other, isn't relevant to what programs we can run. KMail runs fine with GNOME. Gnucash runs in KDE, etc. But users who are considering Linux, and even some developers, don't seem to know this. They seem to equate the choice with choosing a BetaMax or a VHS (I was alive in the 1980's). Each machine couldn't play the other's tapes. Hence, when the general newsmedia reports on the choice of desktops, potential users conclude that the Linux desktop isn't as mature as Microsoft Windows, because it hasn't converged on a consistent way of doing things. Linux advocates should be certain that potential users know that having a choice of desktops doesn't prevent one from running any applications.
If you're trying to persuade a 40 something then tell them that choosing a desktop system is like buying a video recorder that plays both VHS and Beta and doesn't cost any more.
Maybe if they make some standards I won't have to spend an hour installing a game on Linux and end up finding out that I had to just copy the files into a folder and click the exectuable that said "Click Me".
I thought you could already run Photoshop natively on a *nix system, its called OS X.
We need a standard so that third-party kernel modules do not need to be recompiled with every minor kernel update. Only on Linux deals with this issue in such archain way. The third party drivers I install on Solaris or Windows boxes do not need to be reinstalled for YEARS despite numerous kernel updates until you do a major OS upgrade.
When OS/X runs on a standard x86 this is a solution for the masses. Until then, you have to buy a new box to do this. That adds a great deal to the cost, even if Macs are not overpriced as in past years. I can take an old box and test any BSD, Linux distro or a version of Windows. I can't do that with OS/X, so I have to 'take the plunge' or else I'll never use a Mac. The 'transition barrier' for OS/X is very high. Even if the final state is very high, a high activation energy can be rate limiting. In this case, marketing follows chemistry :-)
Think global, act loco
See Ulrich Drepper:m l
/usr/bin, etc. The workstation I'm writing this on has 2843 files in there, not counting X11. This is one reason why many systems are so slow to process this directory through a GUI combobox or file manager.
/media much sooner, etc.
/opt, etc. But it could have been a lot better without vendor pressure.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/udrepper/8511.ht
Historically, the LSB hasn't been very useful. Maybe it will in the next version. But not if the problems with the tests aren't sorted.
I was subscribed to the FHS mailing list, back in '98 or '99. I forget which version we were arguing about at the time, and can't check as the list archives don't go back that far. Part of the push to get that version out was that vendors just wanted *something*, optimal or not.
IMHO, it was that sort of thing that led to problems like multiple desktop environment binaries all being located in
It's also the reason we didn't have
I'm not berating the list members. A lot of good came out of it, and there were many issues, such as allowing for how existing Unices used
IMHO, OpenGroup and LSB are as much about PR as anything else.
What you do with a computer does not constitute the whole of computing.
So here I am, trying to decide whether to support Gnome or KDE with this big project I am now planning. I think perhaps the simplest solution will be to pick an existing big project and see which they support. How about Firefox?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
"Linux sucks so bad when it comes to forward/backward compatibility that people have started the migration to (Open)Solaris. And we're downright worried about it."
Yeah, Linux sucks. Just wait 'till others find out about Solaris.
Oh, and BTW - good luck holding on to a sinking iceberg. Too bad Penguins don't like warm water.
The aim of this standard is for vendor's to be able to release a single binary and have it run on any LSB for Desktop compliant system.
the important parts are
The standard is to be based on work of freedesktop.org, It will almost certain it will not include specifying which desktop environment is used - It will just specify the behaviour of the desktop when it comes to running a binary application
...Ultimately it's about expanding the market. The community can continue to shut costs onto the userbase, but the users who are willing to accept that are all there. But improving the ease and economics of Linux ownership through binary compability will allow it into areas where it is currently has not been viable.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I don't see the need for that on a modern desktop system. Most of the guidelines in the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard come from a historical idea that you can share the same programs on every UNIX system on a site by mounting an NFS share on /usr, but this is an extra unnecessary complication for home users. Who even has separate / and /usr partitions today?
I think the parent tricked you! The official description is:
This precludes /usr/share from containing executable binaries, since they are different for each architecture. It was basically designed to separate the platform-specific and platform-independent files that were one both kept in /usr/lib. On my Ubuntu Linux system, /usr/share/bin doesn't even exist.
They already provide software for Linux - Distiller and Reader for example. Surely those 2 applications cover stuff like desktop integration, printing, filesystems etc. They've already gone to the trouble to implement these; why would Photoshop be any different? There are no OS barriers, it's just sensible to pool the design efforts together - freedesktop.org has been pretty successful already.
I guess they can and will provide Photoshop when they're certain there's strong demand for it - though professional users of Photoshop doubtless will run the OS with the widest portfolio of well-marketed applications.
Ok.. What's so special about this? SuSE has provided LSB support since verson 9 or so haven't they? Red Hat also supports LSB if I remember right. Is this only considered a big deal because of Adobe? If so, what is Adobe bringing to the table that is going to help? This is a step in right direction, but other people need to to jump on this bandwagon.
:) I'm sure that is going to make Windows users flock to Linux in droves. :)
I find this comment interesting:
"Right now the only thing in the LSB is the base X libraries," Quandt said. "This means applications using GNOME or KDE libraries can only be LSB-compliant by static linking, which makes them huge, and in some cases GNOME/KDE libraries don't support static linking because they want to dynamically load them for various reasons."
If I want to run a compliant GUI should I use twm?