5 ms·

Why does a user care that XFCE is on an old version of GTK? I can see why that would frustrate developers, but I don't see how that surfaces to users as a usab

Why does a user care that XFCE is on an old version of GTK? I can see why that would frustrate developers, but I don't see how that surfaces to users as a usability issue.

canofbars 6y ago
GTK2 fails in a lot of ways. The main one that bothers me is when I open a GTK2 app, it picks the DPI scale of one of my monitors so when I drag it over, instead of resizing to the new dpi scale, it will either become massive or tiny.
- bigbubba 6y ago
  Ah that makes sense. I've never tried it on mismatched screens.
  - justwalt 6y ago
    Unfortunately, I don’t know of any DE that does this well at this point.
    - canofbars 6y ago
      Gnome with wayland supports it but every time you start an xwayland app you notice issues. Native wayland/gtk3 apps have been flawless for me. Things just snap to the new scale when you drag them across.
      - hollerith 6y ago
        Is Chrome, Chromium, Microsoft Edge or Firefox available as a native Wayland app that just snaps to the new scale when you drag it across?
        djsavvy 6y ago
        I’m pretty sure Firefox has native wayland support, which can be enabled with an environment variable. Take a look at [1] for more. https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/c8itj2/enabling_wayland_on_linux/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/c8itj2/enabling_wa...
        hollerith 6y ago
        OK, but I'd still like to know whether a firefox-wayland window will flawlessly snap to the new scaling factor when you drag it to another monitor whose scaling factor is different from the original monitor. (Same question for Electron apps, particularly VS Code.)
        canofbars 6y ago
        It does for firefox. Chrome and electron have beta support for it but I'm not sure its on by default yet.
        thaumasiotes 6y ago
        This doesn't make sense to me. Surely scaling the window according to the settings that apply to the monitor it's on is a job for the window manager, and not a job for the software running inside the window?
        auscompgeek 6y ago
        If the window manager were to upscale a window, you would get the typical artifacting, such as blurriness, from the upscaling. The application toolkit is the best place to do scaling, as it knows how to render text etc. This is how it works on Windows as well; if the application reports it correctly supports scaling, Windows will let the application handle scaling (otherwise Windows will do it for the application, with the usual caveats).
        6y ago
    - AlexanderDhoore 6y ago
      Windows does. MacOS does. Wake me up when wayland is stable. Maybe in 10 years?
      - kaba0 6y ago
        Good morning, wayland is stable
jandrese 6y ago
I ran into a bug with GTK2 stalling out with some malformed DBUS messages (symptom: your application takes an additional 20 seconds to start). So I made a sample app that demonstrated the problem, ran some system traces, tried to engage the GTK developer community and only got an "eww, gross, not touching that". It's pretty clear that GTK2 has been left out to bit rot at this point and it's going to completely collapse at some point. Only option is to update your old apps.
- pantalaimon 6y ago
  I think we need something like wine for GTK2 and qt3/qt4 as a way to run old apps going forward. It's still possible to run 20+ years old Win32 Apps that way.
- benibela 6y ago
  I have heard about that bug https://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/topic,51016.0.html https://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/topic,51016.0... I have not seen it, but it would affect all my programs, it sounds very annoying
  - jandrese 6y ago
    Thanks for the link, I had not found that myself and the workaround suggested (installing the Unity integration module for GTK) worked! It generates a spurious error message about Unity not being on the machine, but that's way less annoying than a 25 second pause on startup.

Why does a user care that XFCE is on an old version of GTK? I can see why that would frustrate developers, but I don't see how that surfaces to users as a usability issue.

canofbars 6y ago

GTK2 fails in a lot of ways. The main one that bothers me is when I open a GTK2 app, it picks the DPI scale of one of my monitors so when I drag it over, instead of resizing to the new dpi scale, it will either become massive or tiny.

bigbubba 6y ago
Ah that makes sense. I've never tried it on mismatched screens.
- justwalt 6y ago
  Unfortunately, I don’t know of any DE that does this well at this point.
  - canofbars 6y ago
    Gnome with wayland supports it but every time you start an xwayland app you notice issues. Native wayland/gtk3 apps have been flawless for me. Things just snap to the new scale when you drag them across.
    - hollerith 6y ago
      Is Chrome, Chromium, Microsoft Edge or Firefox available as a native Wayland app that just snaps to the new scale when you drag it across?
      - djsavvy 6y ago
        I’m pretty sure Firefox has native wayland support, which can be enabled with an environment variable. Take a look at [1] for more. https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/c8itj2/enabling_wayland_on_linux/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/c8itj2/enabling_wa...
        hollerith 6y ago
        OK, but I'd still like to know whether a firefox-wayland window will flawlessly snap to the new scaling factor when you drag it to another monitor whose scaling factor is different from the original monitor. (Same question for Electron apps, particularly VS Code.)
        canofbars 6y ago
        It does for firefox. Chrome and electron have beta support for it but I'm not sure its on by default yet.
        thaumasiotes 6y ago
        This doesn't make sense to me. Surely scaling the window according to the settings that apply to the monitor it's on is a job for the window manager, and not a job for the software running inside the window?
        auscompgeek 6y ago
        If the window manager were to upscale a window, you would get the typical artifacting, such as blurriness, from the upscaling. The application toolkit is the best place to do scaling, as it knows how to render text etc. This is how it works on Windows as well; if the application reports it correctly supports scaling, Windows will let the application handle scaling (otherwise Windows will do it for the application, with the usual caveats).
        6y ago
  - AlexanderDhoore 6y ago
    Windows does. MacOS does. Wake me up when wayland is stable. Maybe in 10 years?
    - kaba0 6y ago
      Good morning, wayland is stable

jandrese 6y ago

I ran into a bug with GTK2 stalling out with some malformed DBUS messages (symptom: your application takes an additional 20 seconds to start). So I made a sample app that demonstrated the problem, ran some system traces, tried to engage the GTK developer community and only got an "eww, gross, not touching that". It's pretty clear that GTK2 has been left out to bit rot at this point and it's going to completely collapse at some point. Only option is to update your old apps.

pantalaimon 6y ago
I think we need something like wine for GTK2 and qt3/qt4 as a way to run old apps going forward. It's still possible to run 20+ years old Win32 Apps that way.
benibela 6y ago
I have heard about that bug https://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/topic,51016.0.html https://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/topic,51016.0... I have not seen it, but it would affect all my programs, it sounds very annoying
- jandrese 6y ago
  Thanks for the link, I had not found that myself and the workaround suggested (installing the Unity integration module for GTK) worked! It generates a spurious error message about Unity not being on the machine, but that's way less annoying than a 25 second pause on startup.