freedesktop.org (fd.o), formerly X Desktop Group (XDG),[1][2] is a project to work on interoperability and shared base technology for free-software desktop environments for the X Window System (X11) and Wayland on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. Although freedesktop.org produces specifications for interoperability, it is not a formal standards body.[3]
Type of site | Software development management system |
---|---|
Available in | English |
Created by | Havoc Pennington |
URL | www |
Commercial | No |
Launched | March 2000 |
Current status | Online |
The project was founded by Havoc Pennington, a GNOME developer working for Red Hat in March 2000. Widely used open-source X-based desktop projects, such as GNOME, KDE's Plasma Desktop, and Xfce, are collaborating with the freedesktop.org project. In 2006, the project released Portland 1.0 (xdg-utils), a set of common interfaces for desktop environments.[4] freedesktop.org joined the X.Org Foundation in 2019.[5][6] Some of the project's servers are hosted by Portland State University.[7]
freedesktop.org provides hosting for a number of relevant projects.[8][9] These include:
Software related to windowing systems and graphics in general
Also, Avahi (a free Zeroconf implementation) started as a fd.o project but has since become a separate project.
XDG Base Directory Specification (XDG BDS) introduces a range of variables where user-specific files used by programs should be found.[14] Many tools and applications utilize these variables by default.[15]
Besides the variables mentioned below, XDG BDS also specifies that users' local binary files may be installed into $HOME/.local/bin
. Systems compliant with the spec are expected to make this directory available in their CLI's PATH
environment variable.[14]
XDG_DATA_HOME
$HOME/.local/share
XDG_CONFIG_HOME
$HOME/.config
XDG_STATE_HOME
$HOME/.local/state
XDG_CACHE_HOME
$HOME/.cache
XDG_RUNTIME_DIR
XDG_DATA_DIRS
/usr/local/share/:/usr/share/
XDG_CONFIG_DIRS
/etc/xdg/
The project aims to catch interoperability issues much earlier in the process. It is not for legislating formal standards. Stated goals include:
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