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It has essentially won on linux, where Qt is limitted to the KDE subculture and cross platform apps for which linux is not a priority. GNOME, Unity, Pantheon, X

by adrusi 11y ago

It has essentially won on linux, where Qt is limitted to the KDE subculture and cross platform apps for which linux is not a priority. GNOME, Unity, Pantheon, XFCE, LXDE, Mate, Cinnamon, etc. all work best with GTK. With some of the heavier weight desktops, Qt apps look quite out of place, kind of like how cross platform UI apps look on Mac and Windows. Since most Qt apps on linux come from the KDE ecosystem, they often pull in a lot of KDE dependancies, which means a lot of extra packages lying around your system, creating clutter, which might bother some people. The relatively heavyweight nature of most Qt apps makes them less appropriate on systems that use just a window manager rather than a full desktop environment. Sure, a lot of GTK apps pull in a bunch of GNOME dependancies, but there's also a large contingent of GTK apps from the lighter-weight XFCE world that don't. Outside of linux, Qt has won pretty decisively, mostly because the GTK developers aren't interested in making GTK apps look good on Mac/Windows, so long as they run.

rhodysurf 11y ago
You can use gtk styling in Qt apps and it looks just like GTK. Also Ubuntu Unity is switching to Qt for unity 8. As for dependencies, there are definitely more Qt apps on linux than just KDE apps.
- seba_dos1 11y ago
  Plus "KDE apps pull a lot of deps" claim is already outdated, as recent releases of KDE Frameworks are highly modularized.
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    Not sure that this is true on the ground as yet. I guess it will filter from upstream to LTS distributions over the next few years. Although I don't actually mind as I find that once you've got one KDE app you end up installing more as they are often quite a lot better (for me) than Gnome ones - and disk space is pretty cheap these days anyway.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
isaacremuant 11y ago
Interesting answer. You left out that Ubuntu's recent SDK has a strong relation with Qt. https://developer.ubuntu.com/en/apps/ https://developer.ubuntu.com/en/apps/ The "out of place" argument is one I commonly used by Mac and Linux users because they want everything to look native in their OS of choice and disregard dev time (to use a different window framework for each OS) and look in every other OS. No one can win that argument to favor THEIR own OS look over another. Qt apps are pretty reliable across platforms and are speedy to develop so that's what should be important instead of getting an impossible native look.

by adrusi 11y ago

rhodysurf 11y ago

You can use gtk styling in Qt apps and it looks just like GTK. Also Ubuntu Unity is switching to Qt for unity 8. As for dependencies, there are definitely more Qt apps on linux than just KDE apps.

seba_dos1 11y ago
Plus "KDE apps pull a lot of deps" claim is already outdated, as recent releases of KDE Frameworks are highly modularized.
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  Not sure that this is true on the ground as yet. I guess it will filter from upstream to LTS distributions over the next few years. Although I don't actually mind as I find that once you've got one KDE app you end up installing more as they are often quite a lot better (for me) than Gnome ones - and disk space is pretty cheap these days anyway.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

isaacremuant 11y ago

Interesting answer. You left out that Ubuntu's recent SDK has a strong relation with Qt. https://developer.ubuntu.com/en/apps/ https://developer.ubuntu.com/en/apps/ The "out of place" argument is one I commonly used by Mac and Linux users because they want everything to look native in their OS of choice and disregard dev time (to use a different window framework for each OS) and look in every other OS. No one can win that argument to favor THEIR own OS look over another. Qt apps are pretty reliable across platforms and are speedy to develop so that's what should be important instead of getting an impossible native look.