Peng Yiyi: It is too early for the Linux Standard to have many obstacles.

The new Linux Standard has aroused hope for users. Is the time for cheers coming?

This is enough news to make everyone who is or will be using the Linux operating system excited. The free standards group officially announced a global Linux Standard, "Linux Standard base 2.0" (LSB 2.0), on September 14, Beijing time ), and received active support from the Linux camp at different levels. The purpose of this standard is to provide an important reference standard for programmers and companies engaged in open-source technology, so that open-source software vendors can easily develop different versions of Linux.

Standards have long been a critical weakness of Linux. Many market research reports have pointed out that the commercial usage of Linux is gradually increasing, but more and more users are experiencing unpleasant experiences: when porting software between different Linux platforms, they usually need to modify the software. This is especially unacceptable for users who have just transferred from windows, because it is almost impossible to happen on Windows-only one company is developing this system, its popularity makes most people believe that compatibility is a natural character of the operating system.

Linux has made great progress in "guerrilla warfare", but it has dispersed itself into "guerrillas" one by one, big, or small ". Personal upgrades have become the main feature of Linux since its birth in 1991. Since then, companies involved in Linux development are also good at adding various features to Linux to make products and services more attractive. Red Hat and Novell are typical representatives. Red Hat has a larger space in the Americas, while Europeans prefer Novell's SuSE Linux, not long ago, China, Japan, and Korea joined hands to support Asian vendors of non-mainstream Linux versions.

In this case, people began to worry that the future Linux will be further divided into multiple incompatible versions, reducing its market competitiveness. The many versions of UNIX have become their precedent. This is about the future fate of Linux: to make the application software fully compatible with different Linux versions, we can remove the "unstable" hats and better compete with Microsoft.

Participation in the formulation of standards may lead the industry, and the emergence of standards will prompt future manufacturers to follow up quickly. Industry analysts: "The launch of the new standard will greatly reduce development costs, because in the future, vendors only need to complete the test under the Standard Edition Linux ." AMD, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel and other well-known manufacturers have to throw an olive branch to this standard. According to the free Standards Organization, many open-source software vendors have also accepted the "Linux Standard base 2.0 ". In fact, the recognition and support of a large number of independent software and hardware suppliers is more important to the development and growth of standards. This undoubtedly increases the Linux odds. "Even if a large number of application developers accept this standard, we still cannot ensure that Linux can seize Microsoft's position. But without such a standard, the development of Linux can only end here."

However, is the time for cheers coming? The problem is not just "Step by Step. The "Linux Standard Foundation" project started as early as May 1998. It was initially initiated by some volunteers. Later, some large Linux developers and hardware giants such as Hewlett-Packard and IBM were involved, in May 2000, a free Standards Organization was established to take charge of the entire plan. This release of the new standard attracted the media's "first standard. This seems ironic. As early as the release of LSB1.1 in 2002, the organization leader claimed that "all linux release kits would follow this standard" by the end of that year, but he had not yet made any promises a few years ago, so far, no one has made a "ticket guarantee" for the consistent actions of the manufacturers ".

Linux has advanced by leaps and bounds in the face of adversity over the years. Due to the free development of software elites, vendors with commercial operation capabilities and financial strength have made standardization a sign of technological maturity, this is also the result of mutual compromise between leading manufacturers. Some analysts believe that "the main reason for the absence of unified standards in the past is that the previous standards do not support the C ++ language, and most programmers use this language to write commercial applications. The new standard version has been revised and is expected to be widely accepted ."

In any case, the new standard raises hopes for Linux users. But for the Linux camp, not only must we have the same coat, but also the same content. This is still a goal that requires long-term efforts.

From: SINA