Portland Project betas common tools for GNOME, KDE

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Jun. 30, 2006

The Portland Project, the collaborative venture of Linux vendors and developers to simplify the process of porting and integrating applications for Linux desktops, has announced the beta release of its first application tools for the Linux desktop's GNOME and KDE environments.

The Portland Project's beta includes a suite of command line tools that are designed to help ISVs (independent software vendors) install their applications in the major Linux desktop environments. Portland's programming interfaces build upon established freedesktop.org specifications to provide developers with easy-to-use tools that automate implementation.

OSDL (Open Source Development Labs), the consortium dedicated to accelerating the adoption of Linux and open-source software and home to the Portland Project, and freedesktop.org, the open-source project focused on interoperability and shared technology for X Window System desktops, have posted the beta at the project's website.

The beta is designed to automate the most commonly used desktop integration tasks, such as activating a web browser and starting an email composer. The Portland APIs augment existing popular graphical desktop toolkits, such at Qt and GTL+. The goal is to enable ISVs to use their preferred development toolkit, typically Qt for KDE and GTK+ for GNOME, without having to worry about their customer's choice of Linux desktop.

"By releasing the Portland Beta, we're giving ISVs the opportunity to closely examine and test the interface capabilities and give us feedback that will result in a highly stable Portland 1.0," said John Cherry, OSDL initiative manager in a statement.

"This kind of review and input will motivate Linux distros and others to include the final programming interfaces in their offerings as early as September," said Cherry.

"The latest release of the LSB (Linux Standard Base) 3.1 helps ISVs to support many different Linux distributions with little effort, said Waldo Bastian, Portland project leader at freedesktop.org and Linux client architect for Intel.

"The Portland Project expands on that by enabling ISVs to easily integrate their applications with the major Linux desktop environments without the need to target one in particular," Bastian added. "Together, these efforts allow ISVs to target the Linux desktop as a single platform and maximize the return on their Linux investment."

The project has the support of both of the once feuding Linux desktop interface developer communities. Leaders from both the KDE and GNOME groups had kind words for the Project.

"The success of the technical previews leading up to a 1.0 release has demonstrated how the Portland Project is effectively addressing the real-world needs of ISVs," said Aaron J. Seigo, KDE alliance director.

"Integration of applications with the user's desktop is essential to provide a Free Desktop that users want to use," said Vincent Untz, member of the GNOME Foundation board in a statement.

"ISVs are willing to provide their applications to everyone, but they cannot afford to have specific versions of their applications for specific environments. The Portland Project is a good example of how cooperation between various Free Software projects can result in a solution to a real-world issue like this one, and w e hope this release will be adopted by the community and the industry."

Some Linux and open-source companies have already committed to using Portland.

For example, Linda Arai, VP of marketing for Turbolinux Inc. said, "Turbolinux is excited about offering tools that will help applications work across desktop environments. We plan to include the beta Portland Project tools in our development branch to assist application developers and include these tools in a future production release of Turbolinux."

Others, such as Red Hat Inc., have not yet publicly committed to the Portland Project. Still others, like Novell Inc., have been quiet but have key employees involved with the Portland Project.

The specific tools that Portland is putting out for this public beta are the following:

Installation Tools:
- xdg-desktop-menu: command line tool for installing desktop menu items
- xdg-desktop-icon -- command line tool for installing icons to the desktop
- xdg-mime -- command line tool for installing file type descriptions
- xdg-icon-resource -- command line tool for installing icon resources
Runtime Tools:
- xdg-open: opens a file or URL in the user's preferred application
- xdg-email -- command line tool for sending mail using the user's preferred email composer
- xdg-screensaver -- command line tool for controlling the screensaver
- xdg-su -- run a program as root after prompting for the root password

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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.