ZDNet has published an article which provides a comprehensive introduction to the Linux Standard Base (LSB), written by Mary Hubley and Mary Ann Richardson for the Gartner Group. Hubley and Richardson write . . .

“The Free Standards Group's Linux Standard Base (LSB) provides a vendor-neutral standard, backed by source code, upon which to build Linux distributions. This standard base is intended as a reference platform from which Linux distributions may be derived and upon which applications may be tested, so that any program that runs successfully on the reference platform can be expected to run on all Linux systems that conform to LSB. As such, LSB focuses only on those elements of the Linux operating system that can affect application compatibility across platforms. The stated goals of LSB are threefold:

• Enable software applications to run on any LSB-compliant distribution.
  
• Increase compatibility among Linux distributions.
  
• Help support software vendors and developers to port and write software for Linux.

To achieve these goals, LSB provides:

• A written specification.
  
• A test suite to measure compliance.
  
• A sample implementation of an Open Source LSB-compliant base distribution.”

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