Latest Linux Standards Base Gets Vendor Support

Neopallium writes to tell us that in a recent announcement at the Desktop Linux Summit the Free Standards Group reports fourteen of the leading Linux vendors have pledged support for the newest release of the Linux Standards Base. From the article: "'The Release of LSB 3.1 is another milestone achieved by the industry and the Open Source Community that delivers ever increasing value to customers,' said Reza Rooholamini, director of enterprise solutions engineering at Dell. 'It enables further uniformity and standardization across applications and distributions that allows quicker deployment of Linux solutions with higher levels of quality.'"

Comments

Dear ScuttleMonkey,

[Anonymous Coward]

You may remember me, I am old friend. Please don't be a stranger.

Sincerely,

Mr. Comma

Interesting Version Number... 3.1

[Chordonblue]

Soooo... 3.1. The first usable version of Windows was 3.1 also. Coincidence?!

Maybe this WILL be the year Linux arrives on the desktop!

Re:"Base"?

[spun]

Because it has nothing to do with desktops, per se. It is a specification for directory layouts, config files, and required libraries, and its purpose is to make sure that applications that compile on one system that complies with the LSB will compile on all systems that comply with it.

Never mind the Linux vendors

[overshoot]

I want to know when we'll get LSB support from the application vendors.

No matter what the roadmap from the EDA Consortium says, too freaking many of the tools I use at $WORK refuse to run on anything other than Red Hat 7.2 (I kid you not!)

And, yes, they actually check /etc/redhat-release

Re:Interesting Version Number... 3.1

[Flimzy]

Nah, it won't be usable until Linux for Workgroups 3.11

Important time saver

[Zaai]

This is excellent news. Linux application developers write their applications against a particular distribution. Some add code to detect what distro the installation is for and adjust their paths accordingly. All other distro's have to spend time to write an installer to map that configuration to their distribution's file system layout. This is repeated every time a new release of a package comes out. With 100,000+ packages, that is a lot of work. Take Gentoo's ebuild system. Can you image how much effort it takes to maintain all those ebuilds? Any standardization of the Linux filesystem layout will reduce this effort and saves countless hours. Hours now can be used to improve applications themselves. Good news indeed :)

Re:Is LSB a good thing?

[Spy der Mann]

Here is a standard that specifes how to package APIs and which APIs to use if you want to have a a LSB complient desktop and application. Isn't that a bit restrictive?

It depends on what you call "restrictive"...

Tarzan not like roads.
Roads make Tarzan not move freely.
Road lights threaten Tarzan with big noisy cars.
Tarzan likes tree ropes.
Tarzan prefers jungle.

In jungle, Tarzan goes wherever he wants! AAAAA aaaaAAaAAaa AAA!

LSB is a Pipe Dream Really

[segedunum]

The only way to reliably guarantee binary compatibility (especially with the test suites the LSB use) and compatibility to any important degree is to have the same binaries, and henceforth, the same distribution. It is actually possible to pass the certification for the LSB with one set of hardware and fail it with another.

LSB compatibility is a nice badge to put on your software boxes (management love accreditation logos!), but whether it will mean anything to the ISVs who should be taking notice of it and anything practical for end users is another question.

Re:Ummm

[Xtifr]

> Um, wasn't Linux supposed to break away from standards and uniformity

No--where on earth did you come up with that silly notion? Linux has achieved most of its success through leveraging existing standards (e.g. POSIX, TCP/IP, ISO language standards). The one that tries to "break away" from standards is MS, because standards don't promote customer lock-in. If you follow standards, then customers may be able to look at other vendors that follow the same standards.

Standards in Linux are not mandated (because you have the freedom to do whatever you want with the code, pretty much), but are greatly respected and generally followed when possible/reasonable. Standard-breaking Linux projects (and I admit there are some) are almost always completely outside of the mainstream.

> or is that just breaking away from Microsoft standards?

"Microsoft standards?" Isn't that an oxymoron? :)

What MS mostly has is ad-hoc, undocumented arbitrary code which the rest of the world is just supposed to accept as-is without questioning. The main notice they take of standards is when the see an opportunity to embrace-and-extend to subvert a standard (see ISO C, HTML, Java, Kerberos, etc., etc.)

> Sarcasm if you didn't get it.

Um...does that mean that you're a troll, rather than just a very clueless person? If so, then count me as trolled, but my post is really addressed to those who are clueless enough to think there's some validity at all to what you posted.

Has LSB fixed RPM hell yet?

[sinewalker]

I hope 3.1 addresses my main gripe with RPMs: an RPM built for Fedora won't install into SUSE because of dependency issues, or vice versa.

I'm still reading the latest spec to see if this has been or is going to be addressed. When/if it is, then I'll be very happy, because it will mean finally the end to confusion about using the "right" RPM repositories for your distro: if the distro is LSB compliant, then any RPM repository for that distro should work with other LSB compliant distros, with the dependencies for packages containing Base libraries being met or at least consistant accross the distros.

Until that happy day, the LSB doesn't add a lot of value to me as an end-user. As a developer, it does have some small value, in that it provides me a consistent API, but that's about it...