FreeDesktop.org or known as fd.o abbreviation, is a project to work on interoperability and shared base technology for free software desktop environments for the X Window System (X11) on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. Founded by Havoc Pennington from Red Hat in March 2000, organisation seeks to ensure that differences in development frameworks are not user-visible.

The aim of the project is not to legislate formal standards. Rather, it aims to catch interoperability issues much earlier in the process.

1. Collect existing specifications, standards and documents related to X desktop interoperability and make them available in a central location;
2. Promote the development of new specifications and standards to be shared among multiple X desktops;
3. Integrate desktop-specific standards into broader standards efforts, such as Linux Standard Base and the ICCCM;
4. Work on the implementation of these standards in specific X desktops;
5. Serve as a neutral forum for sharing ideas about X desktop technology;
6. Implement technologies that further X desktop interoperability and free X desktops in general;
7. Promote X desktops and X desktop standards to application authors, both commercial and volunteer;
8. 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;
9. Provide source repositories (git[4] and CVS[5]), web hosting, Bugzilla, mailing lists and other resources to free software projects that work toward the above goals

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