The Linux Foundation Announces Linux Standard Base 3.2

The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced an update of the Linux Standard Base (LSB). The new LSB 3.2 introduces new features for interpreted languages, printing and multimedia, further enabling application developers to easily and cost-effectively support the Linux operating system.

“The LSB meets the increasing demands of ISVs that want to build portable applications for Linux,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. “With the inclusion of interpreted languages, printing support, and a variety of other requested features, this release provides the functionality that ISVs need to deliver their sophisticated applications in a portable, cross-distribution format.”

The LSB delivers interoperability between applications and the Linux operating system, allowing application developers to target multiple versions of Linux with only one software package. This allows Linux to compete effectively against proprietary, monolithic platforms. The LSB has marshaled various Linux distribution vendors to certify to its standards, including Debian, Mandriva, Novell, Red Hat, Ubuntu and Xandros.

Specific updates to the new LSB 3.2 include new support for interpreted languages Perl and Python. This will enable application developers to ensure that their Perl and Python applications (whether cross-platform or Linux-specific) will work on the vast majority of Linux systems. In addition, the LSB team and the LF’s OpenPrinting Workgroup have collaborated to add printing interfaces to the LSB and support for portable printer drivers. On the important multi-media front, trial support for libasound, the API for the ALSA sound system, has also been added for LSB 3.2, as well as trial support for the Portland Project’s xdg-utils. Using xdg-utils will enable LSB-compliant applications to integrate better with the Linux desktop, and the trial standard for ALSA is an important first step in enabling cross-distribution Linux multimedia applications.

Other features of LSB 3.2 include:

* New “trial use” modules, replacing the former “optional” modules. This will allow the LSB to add new modules more quickly yet not lock certifiers into supporting modules not yet ready.

* Several freedesktop.org standards, including menus and icon themes, making it easier for developers to write applications for the desktop

* Promotion of Qt 4 to a required part of the standard, and deprecation of Qt 3

* FreeType support, through both FreeType and the Xft X extension

* XRender support

The Linux Standard Base 3.2 specification, test suite and developer tools are available today on the Linux Foundation’s web site at http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/LSB_3.2.0/. The next major release of the LSB will be released late in 2008.