Gtk 5 might drop X.11 support, says GNOME dev
- Reference: 1657020789
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/07/05/gtk_5_might_drop_x11/
- Source link:
Emmanuele Bassi opened a [1]discussion last week on the GNOME project's Gitlab instance that asked whether the developers could drop X.11 support in the next release of Gtk.
At this point, it is only a suggestion, but if it gets traction, this could significantly accelerate the move to the Wayland display server and the end of X.11.
[2]
Don't panic: Gtk 5 is not imminent. Gtk is a well-established toolkit, originally designed for the GIMP bitmap editing program back in 1998. Gtk 4 arrived relatively recently, shortly before the release of [3]GNOME 40 in 2021 . GNOME 40 has new user-interface guidelines, and as a part of this, Gtk 4 builds GNOME's Adwaita theme into the toolkit by means of the new libadwaita library, which is [4]breaking the appearance of some existing apps .
[5]
[6]
Also, to be fair, as we recently covered, the [7]X window system is very old now and isn't seeing major changes, although [8]new releases of parts of it do still happen .
This discussion is almost certain to get wildly contentious, and the thread on Gitlab has been closed to further comments for now. If this idea gains traction, one likely outcome might well be a fork of Gtk, just as happened when GNOME 3 came out.
[9]
The new desktop alienated so many users that Argentine developer Perberos [10]forked GNOME 2 to create [11]MATE , which was [12]backed early on by Linux Mint .
Although Gtk 3 was released in [13]2011 , several other Gtk-based desktops have only recently moved to it, as we mentioned in [14]our coverage of Mint 20.3 . MATE [15]1.18 in 2017 and Xfce [16]4.14 in 2020 were their first Gtk 3-only releases. Many flagship desktop Linux apps are programmed around Gtk including Firefox, Google Chrome, and LibreOffice.
[17]Rufus and ExplorerPatcher: Tools to remove Windows 11 TPM pain and more
[18]Ubuntu Unity desktop back from the dead after several years' hiatus
[19]Open source Office rival Collabora releases web-based CODE 22.05
[20]Old-school editor Vim hits version 9 with faster scripting language
Gtk's primary competition is the [21]Qt toolkit , which is used in the [22]KDE Plasma environment as well as by [23]LXQt and Trinity . One of the key differences is that Qt mainly targets C++ programmers, and KDE is [24]built in C++. Many Linux developers are C traditionalists and don't care for C++. This, along with [25]Qt's partly commercial model , was why the GNOME project [26]started .
Although the X window system is nearly 40, it still works, and adoption of Wayland has been very slow. Wayland [27]1.0.0 was released in 2012, but Fedora didn't move to it until [28]version 25 in 2017 , for example. Admirers of X often cite that it has the advantage of working over a network connection, although many of its modern extensions, such as OpenGL acceleration and window compositing, break this.
A lot of the features of the current version, X.11, are no longer used or relevant to most users. Even so, [29]X.12 is barely even in the planning stages yet. ®
Get our [30]Tech Resources
[1] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/5004
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YsRgIPfgFka1DRNJrTX7FAAAAE0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/09/gnome_human_interface_guidelines/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/28/gnome_42_inconsistent_themes/
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YsRgIPfgFka1DRNJrTX7FAAAAE0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YsRgIPfgFka1DRNJrTX7FAAAAE0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/22/the_x_window_system_just/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/28/x_org_1_21/
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YsRgIPfgFka1DRNJrTX7FAAAAE0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://mate-desktop.org/blog/2011-12-05-introducing-mate-desktop/
[11] https://mate-desktop.org/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2011/11/07/linux_mint_12_gnome_3/
[13] https://blog.gtk.org/2011/02/10/gtk-3-0-released/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/12/mint_203_mozilla/
[15] https://mate-desktop.org/blog/2017-03-13-mate-1-18-released/
[16] https://www.xfce.org/download/changelogs/4.16
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/04/rufus_explorerpatcher_windows_11/
[18] https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/01/ubuntu_unity_desktop_updated_after/
[19] https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/01/collabora_releases_code_2205_webbased/
[20] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/30/vim_9_is_here_with/
[21] https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/05/qt_lts_goes_commercial_only/
[22] https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/09/plasma_524/
[23] https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/09/new_qt_linux_desktops/
[24] https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved/development
[25] https://www.theregister.com/2020/01/28/new_qt_terms_changes_are_necessary_for_our_business_model/
[26] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-list/1997-August/msg00123.html
[27] https://wayland.freedesktop.org/releases.html
[28] https://www.theregister.com/2017/01/06/fedora_25_review/
[29] https://www.x.org/wiki/Development/X12/
[30] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Gnome being Gnome...
A decision to dump X for Wayland would be just Gnome's style, they'll ditch some of the essential functionality but still call it progress.
Gnome puts people off desktop Linux.
In other news
Linux users ditch Gnome, switch to KDE, and live a happy, productive life.
Gnome devs who drank the Wayland coolaid...
I will not make ad hominem attacks about what they might be FEELING (not thinking), nor imply the use of illegal mind altering substances, nor suggest that their heads are NOT firmly upon their shoulders and capable of unrestricted breathing.
That being said, they have CLEARLY lost their way and need some "gentle nudging" back to the world of REALITY.
a) Adwaita-only of GTK 4 is ALREADY SO RIDICULOUS, breaking the ONE thing that GTK 3 still had going for it, the ability to have a theme like "TradictionalOk" and *NOT* *FORCE* *ALL* *OF* *OUR* *DESKTOPS* *TO* *LOOK* *LIKE* *WIN-10-NIC* *NOR* *CHROME* *BROWSER* (both of which I *HATE*). [2D FLATTY FLATSO AND UN-GRABBABLE SCROLLBARS *JUST* *PLAIN* *SUCK*, that's why and I hacked out a nice way to get TraditionalOk to work in Firefox so I can have REAL SCROLL BARS again)
b) Eliminating the ONE thing that makes Linux and other OSs like FreeBSD *SO* *POWERFUL* *AND* *USEFUL* *FOR* *EMBEDDED* *DEVELOPMENT* (and other things) is *CLUELESS* when it comes to "who the CUSTOMERS are". You NEED X11 protocol across the network, or even on the same machine via localhost, to be able to do certain VERY cool things!
FOSS is NOT a reason to go off and morph a project into something that YOU WANT OTHERS TO HAVE TO USE. You are missing the ENTIRE point if you think this is a GOOD thing. Instead, an update to X11 that addresses whatever perceived shortcomings there are would be MORE appropriate.
I cite once again Arthur C. Clarke's "Superiority" (for those who are unfamiliar, it should still be available online and is a short read)
Re: Gnome devs who drank the Wayland coolaid...
The're probably frustrated by Wayland just being there, rotting alone in the dark, and want to corner some of their own development community into advancing it.
Re: Gnome devs who drank the Wayland coolaid...
"... I hacked out a nice way to get TraditionalOk to work in Firefox so I can have REAL SCROLL BARS again"
Nice - would you consider sharing that?
Re: Gnome devs who drank the Wayland coolaid...
Superiority link:
http://www.mayofamily.com/RLM/txt_Clarke_Superiority.html
Re: Gnome devs who drank the Wayland coolaid...
Aha, but the modern way to do applications over the network is a webserver and about 5TB of Javascript Frameworks.
And I don't think 5TB is too much of an exaggeration given the amount of [poop emoji] that abomination known as npm pulls down anytime I try to use it.
Re: Gnome devs who drank the Wayland coolaid...
Upvote, though I disagree that "FOSS is NOT a reason to go off and morph a project into something that YOU WANT OTHERS TO HAVE TO USE."
FOSS is a reason to go on whatever trip you want as long as you let anybody join in. Unbelievably stupid and arrogant headtrips included. Just don't expect too many to join the band.
Just to be clear, the concern some people had about Qt back when KDE started was that while it was available as source code, you couldn't distribute modifications. This meant that if Trolltech decided to close the source at some point, then KDE was stuck with a massive dependency that couldn't be improved. That prompted the GNOME project based on the Gimp's GTK+ library. Since then Qt has been progressively relicensed under more permissive licenses.
It is LGPL now, same as GTK.
The problem is that the long-term support version is no longer available under that licence.
Regarding Qt and its history and present try the Wiki on it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_(software)
Wayland is missing one critical feature needed by content creators
It's not in mainstream awareness, but Wayland is missing at least one critical feature needed by visual content creators like photographers, artists and publishers, and that is Color Management. It's been standard on existing operating systems and desktop graphics systems like MSWindows, OS X and X11 for decades, but Wayland's architecture makes adding this quite difficult, as it appears to cut across many of Waylands founding assumptions about information hiding and security.
Re: Wayland is missing one critical feature needed by content creators
"it appears to cut across many of Waylands founding assumptions about information hiding and security"
Assumptions; never a good thing. Make an early design decision to do something specific and you find you've exluded the possibility of doing several other things.
Hi, it looks like you want people to keep using an old version of your app, do you want help with that?
"Although the X window system is nearly 40, it still works"
So don't break it, which is the opposite of the Gnome developers.
There is a reason why I use Mate and or Cinnamon instead.
"this could significantly accelerate the move to the Wayland display server and the end of X.11."
Nope. It'll result in GTK 5 being ignored.
One of the advantages of X11 is the network transparency. I can ssh into my headless Raspberry Pi and have xosview or whatever on my local display.
From what I can tell, Wayland doesn't even plan to implement anything like this.
Re: (The title is too long) ... the end of X.11
One great thing about FOSS is you can create new software, but you can't forcibly EOL the old software.
The Gnome team seem to have given up all pretence of writing useful and useable software and are now openly trying to annoy as many people as they can. Are they based in a hollowed out volcano?
Gnome being Gnome...
Do we need any more evidence of the futileness of the Gnome project? Their main goal in life seems to be breaking compatibility. Thet can't even maintain a healthy extension ecosystem, and now they want to alienate themselves into Wayland. Good for us, if you ask me. Let them rot in their own walled garden.
I for one welcome our Budgie Desktop overlords.
Linus was right when he complained about Gnome being just a fancy waty to waste clock cycles.