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freedesktop.org

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rabbit hole:
  1. Freedesktop.org
Freedesktop.org
Open-source desktop environment software project
Website typeSoftware development management system
Available inEnglish
CreatorHavoc Pennington
Websitewww.freedesktop.org
CommercialNo
LaunchedMarch 2000 (2000-03)
Current statusOnline

freedesktop.org (fd.o), formerly X Desktop Group (XDG),12 is a project to work on interoperability and shared base technology for free-software desktop environments for the X Window System (X11) and on and other . Although freedesktop.org produces specifications for interoperability, it is not a formal standards body.

Wayland
Linux
Unix-like
operating systems
3

"XDG" redirects here. For the game development division External Development Group, see THQ.

The project was founded by Havoc Pennington, a GNOME developer working for Red Hat in March 2000. Widely used open-source 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 2019.56 Some of the project's servers are hosted by Portland State University.7

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Rabbit hole

Where Freedesktop.org leads. Every connection below has a source: a link in this article, a shared Wikipedia category, or CirrusSearch text similarity. Articles already on your trail are left out.

Contents
  • (Top)
  • Hosted projects
  • Stated aims
  • See also
  • References
  • Sources
  • External links
  • Recent changes
  • Rabbit hole
Contents
Contents8 sections
  • (Top)
  • Hosted projects
  • Windowing system and graphics
  • Other
  • Base Directory Specification
  • Stated aims
  • See also
  • References
  • Sources
  • External links
  • Recent changes
  • Rabbit hole
Study aids for Freedesktop.org

Terminology

fd.o
freedesktop.org (fd.o), formerly X Desktop Group (XDG), 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.
X Desktop Group
freedesktop.org (fd.o), formerly X Desktop Group (XDG), 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.
XDG
freedesktop.org (fd.o), formerly X Desktop Group (XDG), 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.
XDG_DATA_HOME
XDG_DATA_HOME: For user application's own data files
XDG_CONFIG_HOME
XDG_CONFIG_HOME: For user's app configuration files
XDG_STATE_HOME
XDG_STATE_HOME: For user-specific app session data, which should be stored for future reuse
XDG_CACHE_HOME
XDG_CACHE_HOME: For user-specific app cache files
XDG_RUNTIME_DIR
XDG_RUNTIME_DIR: For user-specific app runtime files, like sockets, which must not survive reboot and full logout/login cycles
XDG_DATA_DIRS
XDG_DATA_DIRS: Colon-separated list of preference-ordered paths to search for data files in
XDG_CONFIG_DIRS
XDG_CONFIG_DIRS: The same as above but for config files

Terms the article defines in bold, quoted in context.

Categories:
  • Freedesktop.org
  • Free and open-source software organizations
  • Free software websites
  • Projects established in 2000
  • X Window System

923 words · 19 references · revision 1379335458 · CC BY-SA 4.0

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Key concepts

  • X Window System2
  • Wayland (protocol)2
  • Linux2
  • Operating system2
  • Free software1
  • Desktop environment1
  • Unix-like1
  • Havoc Pennington1
  • GNOME1
  • Red Hat1

The articles this one links to most, weighted towards the introduction.

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Hosted projects

freedesktop.org provides hosting for a number of relevant projects.89 These include:

Windowing system and graphics

Software related to windowing systems and graphics in general

  • Cairo, a vector graphics library with cross-device output support
  • Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI), a Linux API to access the graphics hardware, used by X11, Wayland compositors, Mesa 3D, etc.
  • Glamor,10 a 2D graphics common driver for X server on graphics chipsets which have support for OpenGL/EGL/GBM APIs
  • Mesa 3D, an implementation of several graphics APIs such as Vulkan and OpenGL
  • Pixman,11 a low-level software library for pixel manipulation, providing features such as image compositing and trapezoid rasterization; users include the cairo graphics library and the X.Org Server
  • Poppler, a PDF rendering library
  • Video Acceleration API
  • Wayland, a protocol to replace X11; features: no tearing, lag, redrawing or flicker
  • X.Org Server, the official reference implementation of the X11 protocol
  • XCB, an Xlib replacement
  • Xephyr, a display server
  • wlroots, a modular Wayland compositor library

Other

  • D-Bus, a message bus akin to DCOP (KDE 3) and Bonobo (GNOME 2)
  • Elektra, a library for reading and writing configuration
  • FreeType, a text rendering library
  • fontconfig, a library for font discovery, name substitution, etc.
  • fprint, a library for consumer fingerprint reader devices
  • Geoclue, a geoinformation service12
  • GNU GRUB, a boot loader package from the GNU Project1314
  • GStreamer, a cross-platform multimedia framework
  • GTK-Qt engine, a GTK+ 2 engine which uses Qt to draw the graphical control elements, providing the look and feel of KDE applications to GTK+2 applications
  • HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer), a consistent cross-operating system layer; deprecated and replaced by udev
  • , a userspace virtual console to replace the Linux console; uses the and supports

Also, Avahi (a free Zeroconf implementation) started as a fd.o project but has since become a separate project.

Base Directory Specification

See also: Filesystem Hierarchy Standard

XDG Base Directory Specification (XDG BDS) introduces a range of variables where user-specific files used by programs should be found.16 Many tools and applications utilize these variables by default.17

User directories

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.16

XDG_DATA_HOME
For user application's own data files
Default to $HOME/.local/share
XDG_CONFIG_HOME
For user's app configuration files
Default to $HOME/.config
XDG_STATE_HOME
For user-specific app session data, which should be stored for future reuse
Default to $HOME/.local/state
May include logs, recently used files, application-specific information (e.g. window layout, views, opened files, undo history, etc.), akin to session data that should be stored by app by request of system session manager, like X session manager
XDG_CACHE_HOME
For user-specific app cache files
Default to $HOME/.cache
XDG_RUNTIME_DIR
For user-specific app runtime files, like sockets, which must not survive reboot and full logout/login cycles

System directories

XDG_DATA_DIRS
Colon-separated list of preference-ordered paths to search for data files in
Default to /usr/local/share/:/usr/share/
XDG_CONFIG_DIRS
The same as above but for config files
Default to /etc/xdg/

Stated aims

The project aims to catch interoperability issues much earlier in the process. It is not for legislating formal standards. Stated goals include:

  • Collect existing specifications, standards, and documents related to X desktop interoperability and make them available in a central location.
  • Promote the development of new specifications and standards to be shared among multiple X desktops.
  • Integrate desktop-specific standards into broader standards efforts, such as Linux Standard Base and the ICCCM.
  • Work on the implementation of these standards in specific X desktops.
  • Serve as a neutral forum for sharing ideas about X desktop technology.
  • Implement technologies that further X desktop interoperability and free X desktops in general.
  • Promote X desktops and X desktop standards to application authors, both commercial and volunteer.
  • Communicate with the developers of free operating system kernels, the X Window System itself, free OS distributions, and so on to address desktop-related problems.
  • Provide source repositories (git18 and CVS19), web hosting, Bugzilla, mailing lists, and other resources to free software projects that work toward the above goals.

See also

  • Comparison of source-code-hosting facilities
  • Linux on the desktop

References

  1. 1"X desktop group".
  2. 2"Freedesktop.org, home of the X Desktop Group". Archived from the original on 2001-02-02. Retrieved 2013-08-26.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  3. 3"Specifications". freedesktop.org. Retrieved 2023-10-27.
  4. 4Portland points desktop Linux at $10 billion market Archived October 12, 2006, at the Wayback Machine, DesktopLinux.com, 11 October 2006
  5. 5"X.Org To Join Forces With FreeDesktop.org While Foundation Elections Hit A Snag". Retrieved 9 September 2021.
  6. 6Larabel, Michael (11 April 2019). "X.Org To Join Forces With FreeDesktop.org While Foundation Elections Hit A Snag". Phoronix. Retrieved 2023-10-27.
  7. 7"Welcome to freedesktop.org". Freedesktop.org. Retrieved 27 October 2023.
  8. 8

Sources

  • The Big freedesktop.org Interview (Rayiner Hashem & Eugenia Loli-Queru, OSNews, 24 November 2003)

External links

  • Official website
kmscon
KMS driver
Unicode
  • luit, a tool used by terminal emulators
  • libinput,15 a library to handle input devices in Wayland compositors and to provide a generic X.Org input driver. It provides device detection, device handling, input device event processing and abstraction to minimize the amount of custom input code compositors need to provide the common set of functionality that users expect.
  • PulseAudio, a sound server frontend providing software mixing, network audio, and per application volume control
  • PipeWire, a low-latency server for handling sandbox-friendly audio and video streams on Linux, which provides an implementation of PulseAudio, JACK, and ALSA as well as secure methods for screenshotting and screencasting on Wayland compositors
  • Xft, anti-aliased fonts using the FreeType library, rather than the old X core fonts
  • pkg-config, a helper program used to generate flags for compiler and linker to include necessary libraries
    • "FreedesktopProjects". freedesktop.org. Retrieved 2013-09-22.
  • 9"Software". freedesktop.org. Retrieved 2013-09-22.
  • 10"Glamor". freedesktop.org. 17 May 2013. Retrieved 31 October 2015.
  • 11"Pixman". pixman.org.
  • 12Wallen, Jack (6 December 2011). "DIY: Get top-quality open source security tools in one distro". News, Tips, and Advice for Technology Professionals. Archived from the original on 2021-04-18. Retrieved 2019-06-21.
  • 13Larabel, Michael. "GRUB Bootloader Development Moves To FreeDesktop.org". www.phoronix.com. Retrieved 18 March 2026.
  • 14Sandoval, Leo (12 March 2026). "MAINTAINERS: Update GRUB git repository and mailing list addresses". cgit.git.savannah.gnu.org. Retrieved 18 March 2026.
  • 15"[ANNOUNCE] libinput 0.4.0". freedesktop.org. 2014-06-24.
  • 16XDG Base Directory Specification, freedesktop.org, accessed: 2021-05-15.
  • 17"XDG Base Directory - ArchWiki". wiki.archlinux.org. Retrieved 2021-10-08.
  • 18"freedesktop.org git". Gitweb.freedesktop.org. Retrieved 2013-09-22.
  • 19"ViewVC Repository Listing". WebCVS.freedesktop.org. Archived from the original on 2013-10-08. Retrieved 2013-09-22.
    • Created
    10 Jan 2004
    History
    342 edits
    223 contributors
    No edits in the last 30 days
    Last edited
    9 Oct 2026

    342 revisions in total · 223 contributors

    1. 9 Oct 2026, 09:19 UTCZahrazamedahmedimAdded two wikilinks+8diff
    2. 22 Sept 2026, 03:07 UTCPhuzBotmUpdating deprecated parameters & GenFixes - PhuzBot 14−6diff
    3. 7 May 2026, 00:44 UTCStephan Leeds§ User directories inaccuracy by excessive precision+2diff
    4. 7 May 2026, 00:43 UTCStephan Leeds§ User directories nonsense nominative plural to accurate nominative singular (could also be possessive plural)−1diff
    5. 30 Mar 2026, 23:32 UTCExplicitmRemoving link(s) because Expired PROD, concern was: Fails WP:GNG and also not found any WP:RS (XFDcloser)−35diff
    6. 18 Mar 2026, 10:52 UTCLokiretro§ Other gnu grub+616diff
    7. 24 Jul 2025, 14:55 UTCFlynn PeckmRemove mention of "X-based desktops". Most desktops are now Wayland-first or at least support Wayland−8diff
    8. 19 Jul 2025, 23:59 UTCDeviantsemicolon618Removed systemd from fd.o hosted projects as systemd is hosted on github not fd.o−127diff

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    10 Jan 2004
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