What's next for the Portland project

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May 25, 2006

Following its recent Mainz, Germany meeting, the Portland project has now decided on its next moves. Portland, an ad hoc group of commercial and community Linux desktop developers, aims to create a common set of interfaces and tools to allow all applications to easily integrate with the Linux desktop.

After this latest meeting, John Cherry, OSDL's (Open Source Development Labs) initiative manager for the Linux desktop, listed action items for the group to address as it moves forward.

The first of these is for developers to participate in testing xdg-utils on existing Linux distributions. The xdg-utils package is a set of simple Bash shell scripts to provide basic desktop integration functions. The first beta for this package is due later in May, and a 1.0 release is planned for July.

Next, the developers will work on delivering packaging requirements to the LSB (Linux Standard Base) working group, for development of a package creation tool.

Software installation and updating package management, even on a single distribution, as Novell SUSE has recently shown, continues to be a sore spot for Linux distributions. The eventual goal is to have a package manager that will enable both users and developers to install and patch programs on any Linux desktop as easily as Mac users do on Mac OS X.

In addition, the crew is working on establishing an ISV (independent software vendor) documentation portal that will provide guidelines for ISVs to develop Linux applications. This, in turn, will make it much easier for Windows and Mac programmers to port their old programs and write new software for Linux.

Farther down the road, the group wants to standardize an open process and API (application programming interface) for an audio and video equivalent of the LSB. More than just grandfathering a standardized way of handling media, however, the Portland developers want a system that can address upcoming media technologies such as UPNP (Universal Plug and Play).

To help all this happen, the group is also working to organize more face-to-face working meetings, to encourage active participation in the process. Developers and projects are encouraged to participate in defining a common environment for future individual and project work.

Specifically, these meetings will address the specific technical requirements and solutions for such areas as audio and video playback, DRM (digital rights management) and security, and customer-specific requirements.

Finally, the Portland developers' group wants to expand beyond its current European and North American-based membership. In specific, Thailand's TLE Linux, Malaysia's Mimos Linux, India's CDAC Linux Desktop, Korea's Booyo, and the various Chinese Linux projects -- Red Flag, Co-Create, Sun Wah, and CS2C -- were mentioned.

-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

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Use of this site is governed by our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Except where otherwise specified, the contents of this site are copyright © 1999-2009 Ziff Davis Enterprise Holdings Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Ziff Davis Enterprise is prohibited. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.