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Takeaway for GTK+ crowd: Qt thrives, and GTK certainly doesn't. KDE, and Gnome are both toolkits flagship projects. Look at how much developer share KDE gaine

Takeaway for GTK+ crowd: Qt thrives, and GTK certainly doesn't. KDE, and Gnome are both toolkits flagship projects. Look at how much developer share KDE gained, and Gnome lost in the time since Gnome 3.0. The reason is they had few very toxic "thought leaders" who alienated countless developers, and they did not have courage to give them a well deserved kick to the butt, not even an idea that doing so would be right. Now, if they want to recover, even if they will give a kick to Lennart & Co., how would they do so if they have no normal devs left to deliver that kick, and carry on the project after?

tabtab 6y ago
What does the Tk family lack to make "thrivable"? It doesn't have built-in resizable editable data grids, but that gap alone is not a show-stopper.
- spacechild1 6y ago
  Tk is a nice little GUI toolkit, but feature-wise it isn't even comparable to Qt in any way. Personally I started with Tk but it turned out to be too limited, so I switched to Qt.
- arp242 6y ago
  Qt is an application framework – it's much more than just a "GUI toolkit". Tk is nice, but also small and very limited in scope, which is great for some use cases, but less so for others. It's like the difference between a desktop environment like GNOME or KDE, which do much more than just "manage windows", and a more basic window manager like i3 or the countless others that are out there.
m4rtink 6y ago
GTK is actually used quite a bit more on mobile these days thanks to all the distros and software targeting Pine Phone and Librem.
- baybal2 6y ago
  A big hope it is a genuine resurgence, and not a GPE 2.0. But without Android support, their chances are at least halved.
  - ece 6y ago
    Unless Google doesn't allow play services to work in emulation, I don't why this would be a problem. Users can choose if they want Android compatibility or not.
war1025 6y ago
My impression is that while Qt has quite widespread adoption, KDE is still pretty niche. The majority of that I'd guess is that Qt makes a point to be cross-platform. Gtk since 3.0 is pretty well Linux-only and content to stay that way.
- baybal2 6y ago
  It's an irony given that GTK 3.0 made a move for modularised rendering in hopes of getting more cross-platformable.
- alxlaz 6y ago
  Gnome is still the default in most of the big distributions -- but arguably its most popular incarnation, Ubuntu's, deviates significantly from upstream's vision for the default Gnome desktop. Some of these things are pretty hilarious to watch from the outside. For design/UX considerations, Gnome 3 hasn't supported desktop icons in a while now -- so a bunch of distributions ship it with one of the (several) desktop icon extensions, none of which are very functional, along with a bunch of other extensions, like Dash-to-Dock. So every time an unsuspecting user gets a work-issued Ubuntu laptop, you get to watch them trying to figure out how to drag a folder to the desktop, or pin a folder to the dock or whatever. FWIW, though, KDE has a pretty wide install base in some popular distros, e.g. Arch: https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/fun https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/fun .
lock-free 6y ago
Which distros are shipping with KDE by default?
- purerandomness 6y ago
  SuSE.
  - the_why_of_y 6y ago
    SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop currently ships GNOME (and IceWM) and doesn't even mention KDE: https://www.suse.com/releasenotes/x86_64/SUSE-SLED/15/ https://www.suse.com/releasenotes/x86_64/SUSE-SLED/15/ https://documentation.suse.com/sled/15-SP2/ https://documentation.suse.com/sled/15-SP2/ You may be thinking of openSUSE.
- RMPR 6y ago
  I know it's rhetorical, but... openSUSE
- enjoyyourlife 6y ago
  Kubuntu, KDE Neon
- VVertigo 6y ago
  Slackware: Plasma 5 was just moved from testing this week in Current (for the upcoming Slackware 15).
dvirsky 6y ago
I don't know if that's true or not, but I just like Gnome so much more as a DE that it's a shame to read that.
hugh4life 6y ago
Xfce, Cinnamon, and MATE all have a significant user base and they use GTK.
tristan957 6y ago
GTK is thriving by all accounts. Could there be more devs on GTK itself? Yes. Are more and more applications being written in GTK? Yes. Look at Flathub and all the developers putting applications out there.
qdhqdhqdg 6y ago
For me personally, the takeway is that both GTK and QT are getting old. React (and Svelte, etc.) have completely changed the way we build apps, and typical QT & GTK apps are still being written in a retained mode approach with signals & callbacks like 20 years ago. QML is quite interesting but it doesn't feel immediate mode enough like React & Svelte. Flutter, JetPack Compose, Crochet, Fidget, Revery, MakePad, Svelte, etc. all those bring so many new ideas. GTK or QT feel so complicated and hard maintain in comparaison

tabtab 6y ago

What does the Tk family lack to make "thrivable"? It doesn't have built-in resizable editable data grids, but that gap alone is not a show-stopper.

spacechild1 6y ago
Tk is a nice little GUI toolkit, but feature-wise it isn't even comparable to Qt in any way. Personally I started with Tk but it turned out to be too limited, so I switched to Qt.
arp242 6y ago
Qt is an application framework – it's much more than just a "GUI toolkit". Tk is nice, but also small and very limited in scope, which is great for some use cases, but less so for others. It's like the difference between a desktop environment like GNOME or KDE, which do much more than just "manage windows", and a more basic window manager like i3 or the countless others that are out there.

m4rtink 6y ago

GTK is actually used quite a bit more on mobile these days thanks to all the distros and software targeting Pine Phone and Librem.

baybal2 6y ago
A big hope it is a genuine resurgence, and not a GPE 2.0. But without Android support, their chances are at least halved.
- ece 6y ago
  Unless Google doesn't allow play services to work in emulation, I don't why this would be a problem. Users can choose if they want Android compatibility or not.

war1025 6y ago

My impression is that while Qt has quite widespread adoption, KDE is still pretty niche. The majority of that I'd guess is that Qt makes a point to be cross-platform. Gtk since 3.0 is pretty well Linux-only and content to stay that way.

baybal2 6y ago
It's an irony given that GTK 3.0 made a move for modularised rendering in hopes of getting more cross-platformable.
alxlaz 6y ago
Gnome is still the default in most of the big distributions -- but arguably its most popular incarnation, Ubuntu's, deviates significantly from upstream's vision for the default Gnome desktop. Some of these things are pretty hilarious to watch from the outside. For design/UX considerations, Gnome 3 hasn't supported desktop icons in a while now -- so a bunch of distributions ship it with one of the (several) desktop icon extensions, none of which are very functional, along with a bunch of other extensions, like Dash-to-Dock. So every time an unsuspecting user gets a work-issued Ubuntu laptop, you get to watch them trying to figure out how to drag a folder to the desktop, or pin a folder to the dock or whatever. FWIW, though, KDE has a pretty wide install base in some popular distros, e.g. Arch: https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/fun https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/fun .

lock-free 6y ago

Which distros are shipping with KDE by default?

purerandomness 6y ago
SuSE.
- the_why_of_y 6y ago
  SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop currently ships GNOME (and IceWM) and doesn't even mention KDE: https://www.suse.com/releasenotes/x86_64/SUSE-SLED/15/ https://www.suse.com/releasenotes/x86_64/SUSE-SLED/15/ https://documentation.suse.com/sled/15-SP2/ https://documentation.suse.com/sled/15-SP2/ You may be thinking of openSUSE.
RMPR 6y ago
I know it's rhetorical, but... openSUSE
enjoyyourlife 6y ago
Kubuntu, KDE Neon
VVertigo 6y ago
Slackware: Plasma 5 was just moved from testing this week in Current (for the upcoming Slackware 15).

dvirsky 6y ago

I don't know if that's true or not, but I just like Gnome so much more as a DE that it's a shame to read that.

hugh4life 6y ago

Xfce, Cinnamon, and MATE all have a significant user base and they use GTK.

tristan957 6y ago

GTK is thriving by all accounts. Could there be more devs on GTK itself? Yes. Are more and more applications being written in GTK? Yes. Look at Flathub and all the developers putting applications out there.

qdhqdhqdg 6y ago

For me personally, the takeway is that both GTK and QT are getting old. React (and Svelte, etc.) have completely changed the way we build apps, and typical QT & GTK apps are still being written in a retained mode approach with signals & callbacks like 20 years ago. QML is quite interesting but it doesn't feel immediate mode enough like React & Svelte. Flutter, JetPack Compose, Crochet, Fidget, Revery, MakePad, Svelte, etc. all those bring so many new ideas. GTK or QT feel so complicated and hard maintain in comparaison