Standards help Linux stand up to Windows
The Free Standards Group, a consortia of Linux distributors, announced an agreement that could see a standard set of components included in desktop distributions, and thereby help Linux to take on the homogeneity of Windows.
“One of the big things that’s difficult is consistency, and that’s Window’s biggest strength,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Free Standards Group.
If you buy a Windows program, you know it will run on a Windows computer, and Linux needs to work the same way, Zemlin said.
“If you really want to become a broadly adopted and used technology, you have to have that degree of standardization,” he said.
The FSG, which counts among its members IBM, Sun, Dell and Red Hat, has previously certified server versions, or distributions, as conforming to its Linux Standards Base. The latest version of the LSB, 3.1, [due on May 1st] will be the first one to include a standard for desktop distributions.
An approving Dana Blakenhorn managed to sit down with FSG CTO Ian Murdock after the story broke and discuss the process of getting software stakeholders to agree, a process he describes as akin to “cat herding”.
Computer Weekly asked, yet again, whether Linux is ready to take on Windows when the opportunity afforded by the unenviable task of upgrading to a new Windows comes round with the relase of Vista.
Ubuntu, one of the more popular desktop flavours, is touting its plans for the next-but-one iteration, currently codenamed Edgy Eft (it’s a baby newt, apparently).