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  "publishedAt": "2026-05-07T07:09:35.000Z",
  "site": "http://forum.palemoon.org",
  "textContent": "> Or should we stick with what we have, make GTK2 and 3 as good as we can, and for future-proofing do away with attempting to integrate with desktop environments and find a way forward that is widget-agnostic? We might be losing useful features here like drag&drop, snapping, clipboard handling, etc.\n> Or, if all we're doing anyway is trying to provide an integration layer, then why not run on Wine (since win32 isn't going away in the foreseeable future) and do away with native Linux builds? All things that roll around in my head reading this discussion.\n\nLike, I really think we shouldn't put more work into GTK2, at all... that's absolutely a dead-end, we are just keeping that around for NPAPI and no other reason in my opinion, maybe for self-builders who like tinkering with it. I feel like if anything we've let the idea persist too long that the GTK2 version is \"the good version\" (even though we know GTK2 is not a realistic option as time moves on). Distros are dropping it, applications have moved on to GTK3, even the forks of GNOME 2 that you'd think would have stayed on it grudgingly migrated to GTK3 for Wayland support and security updates. That much is known, GTK2's death certificate is the one variable I feel confident of in this whole mess. It might be worth putting more work into our GTK3 version and making _that_ as good as it can be. It technically is not in the past, not yet, but GTK2 being dropped means it is next on the chopping block for sure (though we don't know when)... so we now currently support one dead toolkit, and one mature toolkit that is only getting critical security updates and used by semi-popular GNOME forks but not GNOME itself.\n\nI think having a widget-agnostic fallback is important, simply because I don't think it would be good if we are at the mercy of distros dropping or not dropping what we depend on to be able to run on Linux. I doubt Linux users want that... they complain about wanting their system theme supported. But I think having a fallback that lets us run on Linux no matter what is a perfectly valid idea. At the very least, it would be an emergency brake we could pull in case mainstream distros drop GTK3 (or worse, XWayland, which I don't think is likely but some others think it could happen) so that we don't become something that only runs on Debian and its forks or whatever.\n\nThough reading the room... I think most Linux users believe the future of anything that's not targeting GNOME specifically is Qt. It seems to be the option they trust most as a successor to GTK3 at the moment, there seems to be a frightening lack of interest in GTK4 outside of GNOME, the arguments are all about moving to GTK3... even though GTK3 is itself only getting critical security updates. All I know is, this doesn't seem like a healthy ecosystem, and something is very wrong if everyone is reacting to each major toolkit deprecation like a bomb is being dropped rather than a routine upgrade that might require some work but isn't unreasonable to deal with. Though from what I am hearing, Qt doesn't work like GTK, and the major versions don't break nearly as much these days (though a lot of people have bad memories of some earlier transitions). People do seem to keep recommending it for people that want long-term stability or anything enterprise-grade on Linux.\n\nThe closest analogy in the Windows world I can think of, and frankly I think you'd have to exaggerate it by a few orders of magnitude to really get a feel for it. GTK2 is emotionally (but not technically) similar to Windows XP and/or Windows 7 (depending on the era). It's pure nostalgia fuel with no practical value for targeting modern Linux that people just don't want to let go of for aesthetic reasons. GTK3 is sort of like Windows 10... something that people are grudgingly accepting because the old thing they loved is showing its age and they need something that they can make work well enough for their use cases. GTK4 is Windows 11... everyone is putting their foot down and dragging out their resistance as long as possible, even people who were happy with Windows 10. And emotions about this probably run higher in the Linux community than even in the Windows community, because Linux users are less rational and more idealistic, but also because there is more real, legitimate API breakage with newer GTK than there is with newer Windows.\n\n* * *",
  "title": "Browser Development • Re: Linux Pale Moon with Qt toolkit",
  "updatedAt": "2026-05-07T07:09:35.000Z"
}