The Linux Foundation, the non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, has announced that all the leading commercial Linux companies are certified to Linux Standard Base 4.0 (LSB 4.0), including Canonical, Novell, and Red Hat.
The Linux Foundation has also released a beta of the LSB 4.1 and is soliciting feedback from the public. The LSB delivers interoperability between applications and the Linux operating system, allowing application developers to target multiple versions of Linux with just one software package. It also allows Linux vendors to demonstrate to their customers that they meet a common set of industry standards and that they work together as an industry on advancing Linux.
"We are pleased to release the next version of the LSB to the public. We are also happy to report that the distribution community has worked together on the standard and all are certified," said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. "This is good for the Linux community, good for Linux customers and good for Linux vendors."
An operating system's success is inextricably linked with the number and quality of applications that run on top of it, but Linux and its variances between distributions, present ISVs and individual developers with a unique set of challenges, according to The Linux Foundation. The LSB was created to solve these challenges and lower the overall costs of supporting the Linux platform. By reducing the differences among individual Linux distributions, the LSB aims to reduce the costs involved with porting applications to different distributions, as well as lower the cost and effort involved in after-market support of those applications.
The official release of LSB 4.1 is expected in January. For more details, go here.