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FreeDesktop.org Might Formally Join Forces With The X.Org Foundation

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  • FreeDesktop.org Might Formally Join Forces With The X.Org Foundation

    Phoronix: FreeDesktop.org Might Formally Join Forces With The X.Org Foundation

    FreeDesktop.org is already effectively part of X.Org given the loose structure of FreeDesktop.org, the key members/administrators being part of both projects, and FreeDesktop.org long being the de facto hosting platform from the X.Org Server to Mesa and much more. But now they may be officially joining forces...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    Perhaps now there's a small chance the rotten politics of freedesktop can be cleaned up and removed -- if this goes through -- and X.org picks sane leadership people...

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    • #3
      Originally posted by Redfoxmoon View Post
      Perhaps now there's a small chance the rotten politics of freedesktop can be cleaned up and removed -- if this goes through -- and X.org picks sane leadership people...
      I hope this could in fact, advance the Desktop on opensource space.
      Its good news.

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      • #4
        Is the "Freedesktop.org" even a project? What have they actually made apart from a bunch of broken desktop ideas that no-one really implements specifically and just rather implement their own.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by kpedersen View Post
          Is the "Freedesktop.org" even a project? What have they actually made apart from a bunch of broken desktop ideas that no-one really implements specifically and just rather implement their own.
          There was an LWN article about this recently. https://lwn.net/Articles/767258/ Basically, the intention for freedesktop was to be something like github, before github was a thing. Now there's not much to be offered by an organization like that. This merge should absolutely happen.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by kpedersen View Post
            Is the "Freedesktop.org" even a project? What have they actually made apart from a bunch of broken desktop ideas that no-one really implements specifically and just rather implement their own.
            It was originally known as the X Desktop Group (XDG) and is a collaboration between KDE, GNOME, etc. that's responsible for unifying various formerly desktop-specific things we take for granted today, such as:
            • The XDG Icon Naming Specification, which finally allowed KDE and GNOME desktops to share the same icon themes. (I still remember what a problem that was in the era when KDE 3 and GNOME 2 co-existed)
            • The constellation of specs surrounding .desktop files and other aspects of how applications are integrated into the desktop, such as defining new launcher categories (eg. the Wine submenu), a single means of installing icons and launchers in a way that all desktops will pick them up, ~/.config/autostart as a unified way to add things to a desktop's run-on-login control panel, and ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list as a standard, cross-desktop location for defining file->opener associations. (There was a time when you had to set your file associations separately depending on which desktop environment an application's developers used, so you might have two or three different versions of the same control panel.)
            • Acting as a forum within which KDE and GNOME agreed to sunset KDE 3's DCOP and GNOME 2's Bonobo and replace them with a technology both could agree on: D-Bus.
            • The xdg-user-dirs standard for allowing you to redefine where the KDE/GNOME/etc. analogues to "My Documents" and friends are by editing ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs
            • Tools like xdg-open and xdg-desktop-icon, without which things like GOG.com's Linux installers would either be desktop-specific or very fragile. (Prior to them, you had to resort to tools like kfmclient and gnome-open.)
            • The XDG Base Directory Specification, which is still in the "slowly getting adopted by applications" phase, which defines Linux's equivalents to things like %USERPROFILE%\AppData and how to customize their locations.
            A lot of people forget that all aspects of the Linux desktop ecosystem used to be as fragmented and NIH-riddled as pre-PulseAudio Linux audio.
            Last edited by ssokolow; 15 October 2018, 08:39 PM.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by ssokolow View Post
              A lot of people forget that all aspects of the Linux desktop ecosystem used to be as fragmented and NIH-riddled as pre-PulseAudio Linux audio.
              Yes, people are quick to forget about the good things an organization brings and bash the negatives endlessly.

              Freedesktop.org does serves the important purpose of standardization in the Linux/Unix desktop space. Yes, it may be affected by politics (just like every organization with human beings) but that should not hide the fact that without something like this, the cat-herd would be all over the place and nobody would even try to formulate standards.

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              • #8
                Originally posted by ssokolow View Post
                A lot of people forget that all aspects of the Linux desktop ecosystem used to be as fragmented and NIH-riddled as pre-PulseAudio Linux audio.
                A lot of people forget that the Linux desktop ecosystem extends further than Gnome and KDE and that the fragmentation is still such as that of the early 90s

                I personally have found little value in getting Gnome and KDE to talk to each other. I also see many remaining issues in them doing so. Heck, even icons in Gnome, KDE and certainly Xfce are often out of sync or simply missing. A lot of distros also recommend only having one installed at a time.

                I suppose I can see why a small project like this exists but I can also certainly see why it should just be absorbed by a larger project.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by kpedersen View Post
                  A lot of people forget that the Linux desktop ecosystem extends further than Gnome and KDE and that the fragmentation is still such as that of the early 90s
                  I said "KDE, GNOME, etc." Last I tried them, all of the standards I listed were being followed by KDE, GNOME, Xfce, LXDE, and various standalone applications that could be used to cobble together a desktop.

                  (eg. Unless game developers do something stupid, all Unity-based games automatically get some basic degree of XDG Base Directory Spec compliance by having their config files and saved games in ~/.config/unity3d rather than as random dotdirs directly in ~.)

                  Heck, thanks to those specs, my desktop works beautifully despite being a mish-mash of KDE, Xfce, and LXDE components. (eg. The thumbnails spec is allowing my PCManFM, Dolphin, Konqueror, Geeqie, KDE and GNOME Open/Save dialogs, and various other applications to share a common thumbnail cache.)

                  (Though I will admit that fragmentation still exists. I've been working to find replacements for GTK+ applications so that, when I upgrade off *buntu 14.04 LTS, I'll be able to keep my desktop consistently using the "KDE/Qt, GTK+ 2.x, and Windows 95 through Windows 7" interaction paradigm that I prefer, with none of that "widgets in fat, CSD-based titlebars" and other such cruft to push back against.)

                  Originally posted by kpedersen View Post
                  I personally have found little value in getting Gnome and KDE to talk to each other.
                  Your choice. I've found that there are usually features which only one desktop's applications provide. (eg. Baobab's knock-off of Filelight's radial view is far less usable while, conversely, for all its superiority in other ways, Ark seems to completely lack File-Roller's "If unpacked, these files will take up X amount of space" readout.)

                  Originally posted by kpedersen View Post
                  I also see many remaining issues in them doing so. Heck, even icons in Gnome, KDE and certainly Xfce are often out of sync or simply missing.
                  I've certainly seen some applications falling back to the icons which they add to the hicolor fallback icon theme (as the spec intends) , but the Icon Naming Spec does only cover a common base set of icons by design.

                  Likewise, yes, Qt has a known flaw where not all of its QPA backends know how to query the name of the active icon theme, so applications which don't bundle icons using Qt's internal fallback mechanisms or reimplement querying the active theme may be missing icons on desktops other than KDE or GNOME (such as LXDE, Windows, or OSX), but that's not the fault of the XDG specs either.

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by ssokolow View Post

                    I said "KDE, GNOME, etc." Last I tried them, all of the standards I listed were being followed by KDE, GNOME, Xfce, LXDE, and various standalone applications that could be used to cobble together a desktop.

                    (eg. Unless game developers do something stupid, all Unity-based games automatically get some basic degree of XDG Base Directory Spec compliance by having their config files and saved games in ~/.config/unity3d rather than as random dotdirs directly in ~.)

                    Heck, thanks to those specs, my desktop works beautifully despite being a mish-mash of KDE, Xfce, and LXDE components. (eg. The thumbnails spec is allowing my PCManFM, Dolphin, Konqueror, Geeqie, KDE and GNOME Open/Save dialogs, and various other applications to share a common thumbnail cache.)

                    (Though I will admit that fragmentation still exists. I've been working to find replacements for GTK+ applications so that, when I upgrade off *buntu 14.04 LTS, I'll be able to keep my desktop consistently using the "KDE/Qt, GTK+ 2.x, and Windows 95 through Windows 7" interaction paradigm that I prefer, with none of that "widgets in fat, CSD-based titlebars" and other such cruft to push back against.)



                    Your choice. I've found that there are usually features which only one desktop's applications provide. (eg. Baobab's knock-off of Filelight's radial view is far less usable while, conversely, for all its superiority in other ways, Ark seems to completely lack File-Roller's "If unpacked, these files will take up X amount of space" readout.)



                    I've certainly seen some applications falling back to the icons which they add to the hicolor fallback icon theme (as the spec intends) , but the Icon Naming Spec does only cover a common base set of icons by design.

                    Likewise, yes, Qt has a known flaw where not all of its QPA backends know how to query the name of the active icon theme, so applications which don't bundle icons using Qt's internal fallback mechanisms or reimplement querying the active theme may be missing icons on desktops other than KDE or GNOME (such as LXDE, Windows, or OSX), but that's not the fault of the XDG specs either.
                    If you don't mind GTK+3 in general, but you do mind the CSD's and some other changes, then you should seriously install gtk3-mushrooms, which basically makes GTK+3 look and behave like GTK+2: https://github.com/TomaszGasior/gtk3-mushrooms

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