The Free Standards Group today announced the availability of Linux Standards Base 2.0. There are 20 Linux vendors behind the project, and it’s expected to be bigger than POSIX and other Unix standards.

This is good news for users, especially enterprises. With LSB-compliant software and hardware, they won’t have to sweat testing software on multiple distributions or track down minute changes a specific distro vendor may have made to directory layouts or, more importantly, the kernel.

With luck, this will hopefully make vendors of proprietary software more willing to work on Linux ports and drivers. If they only have to test their ported software on one LSB-compliant distribution to earn a LSB 2.0 certification, they’re golden; no need to wipe and reload multiple distros and double (or even triple or more) their testing time.