Other/future projects • GTK+ 2 Development Initiative

Greetings.

I am not fond of GTK+ 5 which has support of protocol X (XLibre) removed for no appropriate reason;

I am not fond of GTK+ 4, albeit it is lesser bad than GTK+ 3; and

I am not fond of GTK+ 3, due to its unecessary requirement of additional resources.

I think that, GTK+ 2 is the best that GTK+ has ever had to offer.

I further think that, the development of GTK+ 2 should persist.

Software that are, or were, built upon GTK+ 2 and which I utilize.

aMule Ardour (YTK) Asunder Claws Mail (GTK+ 3) EBoard (XBoard) EDuke32 ePDFView FPM2 (GTK+ 3) Gabber Gaupol (GTK+ 3) Geany (GTK+ 3) gFTP GHex (GTK+ 3) GIMP (GTK+ 3) gMTP (GTK+ 3) gmrun (GTK+ 3) Gnumeric (GTK+ 3) Gossip GParted (GTK+ 3) gPodder (GTK+ 3) Gslapt (GTK+ 3) GSmartControl (GTK+ 3) GTK-GNUTELLA Inkscape (GTK+ 3) Liferea (GTK+ 3) Linux DC++ LSHW (GTK+ 3) LXDE MATE (GTK +3) Meld (GTK+ 3) Nicotine+ (GTK+ 3) Pale Moon PCManFM (Qt 5) Quod Libet (GTK+ 3) RFDump Sakura Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection (GTK+ 3) Smuxi Snes9x Sunflower Viewnior (GTK+ 3) Viking (GTK+ 3) WireShark (Qt 5) Xfce (GTK+ 3)

Some projects were ported to GTK+ 3; yet, as one of the prime purposes of these mentioned projects is to be usable, not fancy, I deem that when the developers thereof be aware of an intiatibe to improve and maintain GTK+2, then some, if not all, of them would be interested to support GTK+ 2, again.

GTK2 status in Artix

2025-10-03

Arch is phasing GTK2 out of its repositories. This entails the renaming and removing packages: the newer -gtk[34] which replace old GTK2 ones drop their suffix and the latter are removed.

Artix will keep GTK2 and dependent packages (for as long as they build without much patching) in [galaxy]. Notable ones are LXDE (package group lxde-gtk2) and hexchat. Until the rebuild operation and testing is completed, these packages shall reside in [galaxy-gremlins]. Please understand that they will not be actively supported and help in maintaining is appreciated.

Please follow the GTK2 forum thread for information and updates.

https://blog.lxde.org/2013/04/25/a-guid ... ons-to-qt/

https://blog.wireshark.org/2013/10/switching-to-qt/

https://phoronix.com/news/Ardour-Removes-GTK-Option

https://sourceforge.net/p/gtk-gnutella/ ... nth=202603