conference logo

Playlist "Linuxtag 2006"

The OSDL/freedesktop.org Portland project explained

Waldo Bastian (Intel Corporation)

Application developers targetting the Linux Desktop are confronted with a wide range of different desktop configuration which makes it difficult to integrate their applications with the desktop environment of their user's choice. The Portland project set out to create a common set of high-level desktop integration APIs that application developers can depend on regardless of the environment that the user is running. Portland is focused around two set of interfaces. One set is based on command line tools that provide a single way to install menu items, add icons to the desktop, open files or URLs in the application of the user's choice, activate a mail composer or ask the user for permission to run a command as root. The other set of interfaces is based on a library that applications can link with to get access to similar functionality as well as more demanding tasks such as keyring management and addressbook lookups. In this presentation Waldo Bastian will give an update on the latest status of the portland project and looks ahead on the challlenges ahead.

Über den Autor Waldo Bastian: Waldo Bastian is chairman of the technical board of the OSDL Desktop Linux workgroup. Waldo works for Intel Corporation as Linux Client Architect in the Channel Platform Solutions Group. Before joining Intel in 2005 he worked for SUSE/Novell were he led the Desktop team within SUSE Labs. As a long time contributor to the KDE project Waldo has been involved with desktop Linux for more than 7 years. Currently Waldo is involved in the OSDL/freedesktop.org Portland project which is defining a set of high-level APIs that allows applications to integrate more easily with the Linux desktop. Waldo is also a member of the OASIS OpenDocument TC.