GTK2 revival

[Mæstro]

I always wanted people to fix themes so they look better on GTK3, or just... do something more reasonable than constantly repeat their old saw about GTK2 being "the best version" of our application and everything new being bad…

[…]I have to get demoralized seeing just how many people on this forum have more in common with the values of the types on VOGONS or MSFN or whatever than I was hoping. The timing just made it feel like a giant middle finger from the universe, an admonishment, "No, sorry, sir, you are working on a project for old people that like old stuff, you don't get to move it forward, you don't get to do anything except watch them worship their idol called GTK2, and scoff at your GTK2-atheism, at your non-belief… The kind of people that surround your project won't ever do anything but drag you backwards and scold you for wanting to support modern platforms, getting excited about every retro fork and lashing out at every deprecation. They'll keep pining for GTK2, for SSE2-only builds, and Windows XP, and never forgive you for moving forward. That's your potential userbase, and it's not the one you wanted, not the one you were working this hard for. Deal with it."

[…]I just don't like the fact that we're being dragged backwards and told it's okay to never change, never adapt, become irrelevant to anyone except people who like retro desktops as novelties… now I'm seeing how far apart my values and goals are from a lot of people in this community, and feeling like I'm wasting my time trying to bring anything forwards. Because the people here just want the past preserved pixel-for-pixel, bug-for-bug, they don't want the spirit of the past carried forward and kept relevant on newer platforms. […] That man is not a visionary... he's just stubborn and likes old things and can't see any good in anything new. Maybe because of trauma, maybe because of nostalgia, I don't know…

I think another apology might be in order here. I can only speak for myself, of course.

My own attitude towards GTK2 itself is quite weak. I do not know the difference between how a GTK2 and GTK3 interface would appear, for nobody has ever set them side by side before me. My decision to install the GTK2 version of Pale Moon after Pusser’s builds for Debian 10 ceased was following the rule of thumb to favour the older branch of something, without any further thought on the matter, and my ill informed comments earlier in this thread (which I might even request later be deleted) were in the same spirit. As far as my actual knowledge goes, there is nothing chaining Pale Moon to GTK2 beyond NPAPI support, and your off-topic remark satisfies me this last remaining link can be, and is being, broken. Your comments have, in fact, moved me to think that installing the GTK3 version if I should ever need reinstall Pale Moon would be wise. A better rule of thumb would be use the latest version you think you can trust, and you have earned it.

Empirically, I have been moving forwards at about the proper times to keep in step, my own steps always slow and measured: from XP to 7 in 2012, from 7 to Debian 10 in 2020 and plans for the future already discussed here. I gave up NoScript a bit late, when I felt comfortable doing so, but have not looked back since. I confess that I look on the MSFN people with respect, their difficulties in keeping to earlier Windows versions basically akin to those which you face at Google’s hands. Being able to decide whether or when to adopt a new technology is important to me, a separate matter to how I end up deciding in each particular case. I cannot say I fault others for choosing otherwise. They seem to be taking care of themselves well enough (as with Roy Tam’s builds) that you need not burden yourself with their care.

[athenian200]

I think another apology might be in order here. I can only speak for myself, of course.

My own attitude towards GTK2 itself is quite weak. I do not know the difference between how a GTK2 and GTK3 interface would appear, for nobody has ever set them side by side before me. My decision to install the GTK2 version of Pale Moon after Pusser’s builds for Debian 10 ceased was following the rule of thumb to favour the older branch of something, without any further thought on the matter, and my ill informed comments earlier in this thread (which I might even request later be deleted) were in the same spirit. As far as my actual knowledge goes, there is nothing chaining Pale Moon to GTK2 beyond NPAPI support, and your off-topic remark satisfies me this last remaining link can be, and is being, broken. Your comments have, in fact, moved me to think that installing the GTK3 version if I should ever need reinstall Pale Moon would be wise. A better rule of thumb would be use the latest version you think you can trust, and you have earned it.

Empirically, I have been moving forwards at about the proper times to keep in step, my own steps always slow and measured: from XP to 7 in 2012, from 7 to Debian 10 in 2020 and plans for the future already discussed here. I gave up NoScript a bit late, when I felt comfortable doing so, but have not looked back since. I confess that I look on the MSFN people with respect, their difficulties in keeping to earlier Windows versions basically akin to those which you face at Google’s hands. Being able to decide whether or when to adopt a new technology is important to me, a separate matter to how I end up deciding in each particular case. I cannot say I fault others for choosing otherwise. They seem to be taking care of themselves well enough (as with Roy Tam’s builds) that you need not burden yourself with their care.

Aww, I appreciate this a lot, and I'm sorry if I made you feel bad.

Don't worry, this isn't your fault. It's just... something that's been building for years that sort of surfaced because of this situation. I honestly felt kind of bad about that post after I left it, thought it was a bit of an overreaction on my part... almost didn't post it, but then this thread was bumped again and the OP replied to another thread saying we don't need to worry about moving to a new toolkit because GTK2 will be supported by him (I was kinda tired and may have misunderstood) and I was like, "That does it, if he's going to join in the other threads where we talk about future plans and offer a maintained GTK2 up as reassurance for why we shouldn't do anything about the future, that confirms my worst fears, and I'm just going to post my rant to his thread that I've had saved in a tab for two days and been trying to hold back from posting out of respect."

And honestly, in some ways this situation has taught me a lesson. I remember all the back to when I created my SunOS port and offered it up to OpenIndiana... I was thinking to myself that since they were having trouble with Rust and were stuck on an older version of Firefox close to our fork point, and that since the version they had was so far behind that Pale Moon was a better browser than the Firefox they were shipping, I could get them on board with Pale Moon. When I offered it up to them... they not only rejected it, they doubled down on porting newer Rust to OpenIndiana and started trying to keep up with Firefox versions aggressively, like they never had before. I always assumed I knew the reason, that there wasn't much more to it than I saw on the surface, and never thought about it too hard.

Weirdly... this situation almost makes me understand another part of the likely reason why it triggered so much work to get modern Firefox working on their part, and what it feels like to be on the other side of that. To feel like someone is poking right at your weakness and a pain point threatening to turn all your hard work into some kind of toy that's permanently stuck in the past unless you get really serious about modernizing everything, pronto. You don't wind up feeling grateful for what was offered... you feel trapped, almost mad that you let yourself get into a situation so bad that it feels like they can sense your desperation and use it to further an agenda they have that will not help your project long-term and will just let you kick the can down the road far enough to become irrelevant. I'd almost be tempted to consider this situation karma for how I might have made the OI maintainers feel when I offered it. As much as I like UXP and Pale Moon, I can see how the idea of being a captive audience for it with no better fallback handy would hit differently if you're already anxious about your OS lacking a modern browser.

In my mind, the whole GTK2 thing is a weakness or an obstacle to overcome "when we get around to it," and which is hard to address without upsetting a big portion of the Linux userbase. It isn't a strength or something to celebrate, something I want us to be known for or have our identity tied to. Being offered a maintained GTK2 version in someone else's "special environment" because they think you need it feels like having someone speak more slowly to you because you can tell they think you're mentally not all there... if you know what I mean. It feels like we'd be... becoming something like the engine for a Konqueror revival inside one of those things like MiDesktop or TDE. Something with relevance in only a curated toy box for a handful of nostalgic power users, and which perhaps has its identity increasingly tied to that.

[Daemonratte]

Ok, many new posts to reply to. If I left something out you want me to reply to please send me a message again..

Any changes we'll get binaries for Daedalus? I didn't/won't move to Excalibur due to usrMerge and... GIMP 3.

Yes, now there are debs for Daedalus
https://git.devuan.org/SteveM/DTK_debs

...

The thing is: we want gtk2 to be better than gtk3 and imo it is, with the exception that vanilla gtk2 is somewhat slower than gtk3 atm in Pale Moon. We already fixed that though and we're going to make it even faster. We don't want to preserve the bugs at all. Guys, you all use Pale Moon. There are people who claim that you guys want to preserve an old browser engine, which just isn't true. Please don't do the same to us

...

Yes, we're not upset by your reaction, but I do want to clarify something. We're not just "keeping the past alive for oldschool reactionaries who want things to stay the way they are". Think of gtk2-ng as being what Pale Moon is to Firefox. Pale Moon isn't an ancient browser engine with patches to compile it on modern systems. It's an up-to-date browser engine with a different philosophy. We like gtk2 and we want to give it the same treatment you guys gave to UXP and Goanna. We want gtk2 to become a modern cross-platform toolkit that runs well on modern and old hardware alike. We want to to define what is modern. We want to be the future. We want your browsers and your amazing email client to be the future. We can make it the future.

Is there anything you miss in gtk2? We can add it. We're already planning on writing a new theming engine for css theming as well as a gui application that allows technically illiterate people and casual users to easily create gtk2 themes for various engines. We're also going to add support for proper fractional scaling (the way it works in windows and KDE), smooth scrolling and touch support. In a couple months the win32 and quartz backends are going to be as fully featured as the x11 backend and we'll add a HaikuOS-gdk backend too.

We don't want this to be some nice-to-have nostalgic sideproject. We want to turn this into a toolkit that's going to be used for brand new software, available in as many distro repos as possible.
If we can convince the Ardour team to use our toolkit and make it easier for developers to migrate to our toolkit instead of gtk4 then it will stay. We can then highly boost your engine's market share by making it the default for all the software we're going to modernise.

Also, I remember The_Squash. His project was called "STLWRT" and yeah, he did want to merge gtk2 and 3, but you would have had to compile all your software again for that. Our goal is to stay binary compatible.

Sorry for the wall text.
TLDR, please let me know what you'd like to see in gtk2. We want it to be a truly modern toolkit just like what Moonchild did to Gecko when he forked it into Goanna.

[athenian200]

Yes, we're not upset by your reaction, but I do want to clarify something. We're not just "keeping the past alive for oldschool reactionaries who want things to stay the way they are". Think of gtk2-ng as being what Pale Moon is to Firefox. Pale Moon isn't an ancient browser engine with patches to compile it on modern systems. It's an up-to-date browser engine with a different philosophy. We like gtk2 and we want to give it the same treatment you guys gave to UXP and Goanna. We want gtk2 to become a modern cross-platform toolkit that runs well on modern and old hardware alike. We want to to define what is modern. We want to be the future. We want your browsers and your amazing email client to be the future. We can make it the future.

Ah, I see... so you really DO hope this becomes the next Cinnamon or MATE style revolution, at least toolkit-wise? And you're still hoping for distro buy-in. Thanks for clarifying. I'd honestly have to say... if you guys think appealing to us is a good way to get Linux distros to like you, or you think we must have pull with them because we're an older and more established project that has survived for this long without rebasing on something newer, you might be barking up the wrong tree. Let's just say there's a reason why we tend to package our software as tar.gz, distrust system libs, and encourage people to unpack our binaries to their home directory rather than rely on their distros to ship our binaries in their repos like other Linux software does. To put it bluntly, Linux distros usually are not big fans of us (though I think there are maybe a handful of exceptions). Just fair warning.

We didn't survive by convincing distros to accept Pale Moon in their repos. We survived by compiling and shipping generic enough binaries that most Linux users could run them, and the few that couldn't (usually people on non-glibc Linux) could compile the codebase easily. But as a toolkit, you guys will not have the same luxury. You pretty much NEED distro buy-in, and you need application developer buy-in as well. That's harder in some ways than shipping a UXP application like Pale Moon, because we can just adapt ourselves to our environment (sometimes slowly and painfully) and keep going regardless of how commonly used we are, or whether distros like us, rather than convincing people to target us specifically. And if you're having trouble selling me on it, someone that's in a desperate enough situation that it even sounds beneficial for two seconds... I can only imagine what people who have fully functional GTK3 or even GTK4 ports of their applications already would think of the same pitch.

We don't want this to be some nice-to-have nostalgic sideproject. We want to turn this into a toolkit that's going to be used for brand new software, available in as many distro repos as possible.
If we can convince the Ardour team to use our toolkit and make it easier for developers to migrate to our toolkit instead of gtk4 then it will stay. We can then highly boost your engine's market share by making it the default for all the software we're going to modernise.

I do believe you when you say this outcome is what you want (otherwise why do all that work?), and I completely understand the ambition. It's just... even if you work hard and make this the best it can be. Even if it really is better than GTK4 in every way. There's a really good chance distros will say no anyway. The reason why is that GTK2 is an X11 only toolkit, and a fairly complex one with a lot of moving parts at that. Distros aren't dropping Motif, but GTK2 is a different animal. In 2026, distros want something that can at least support Wayland as far as toolkits and desktops go. It's why MATE and Cinnamon are driving themselves crazy trying to do Wayland ports, they don't want distros to see them as X11 only and drop them. Cross-platform applications (like us) can still get away with targeting XWayland for quite a while probably, but something like a toolkit or a DE needs to support both X11 and Wayland because of where the ecosystem is right now, just to be taken seriously. Maybe some distros would be open if they are shipping XOrg or one of its forks as default still, and seem like they are rejecting Wayland out of hand... the rest will likely steer clear if only because of the optics of a toolkit that explicitly rejects Wayland and the alignments that implies. Even if you do modernize it, distros won't see modern... the name GTK2 kind of precludes that. People will immediately think of the thing that hasn't gotten security updates in 6 years when they hear that name.

Also, I remember The_Squash. His project was called "STLWRT" and yeah, he did want to merge gtk2 and 3, but you would have had to compile all your software again for that. Our goal is to stay binary compatible.

Yeah, that's right. It sounds like you may have been inspired by the idea somewhat. It's a small world after all, LOL.

But yeah, I have no illusions about what it is we are doing here. The primary goal is to keep XUL extensions and theming alive, I believe. In some ways, we are maintaining an old browser engine (and extending it beyond its original limits), because the new one doesn't support our use cases any longer. We have an older CSS parser that Firefox dropped for a Rust-based one, for instance. We maintain tighter integration with XPCOM, XPIDL, XUL, XBL and other technologies. Goanna carries forward a lot of old Gecko code. By a lot of metrics, that is an "old browser engine" because none of that is maintained by Firefox anymore. But still, a lot of code gets backported from Mozilla, security vulnerabilities get patched, a lot of new work gets done to support web standards, and at this point there's even been work on low-level platform code and the build system. And most importantly... we don't guarantee full backwards compatibility with all XUL extensions that were developed for Firefox. As we move forward with the JS engine work, sometimes extension maintainers have to update their code. That's what it means to have a living ecosystem. If you have to maintain binary and API compatibility with GTK2 forever, then what you're developing can't really grow beyond simply being a security-hardened GTK2 with some speed improvements, and maybe a few extras that don't break anything.

What we're preserving is XUL as an API to an extent, but more importantly the flexibility to extend the browser in a more abstract sense, but definitely not making sure everything runs exactly as it did without modification. Sometimes changes break themes or extensions, updates are needed. Sometimes something like moving to GTK3 (or probably another toolkit in the future) would also break a theme or two, again we expect them to adapt and follow us. There is an element of truth to "maintaining an old browser engine," but we replace things as they wear out and don't guarantee backwards compatibility forever, so eventually this may well become so much its own thing that it's not even recognizable, eventually through "Ship of Theseus" logic no longer being the same ship, so far from the original that it has its own ecosystem. A GTK2 fork... really can't diverge much while still being interesting to people with applications that targeted GTK2.

But yeah, I do wish you luck... I just hope you aren't overestimating your chances of success or misreading the incentives in the Linux ecosystem, thinking it's easier to get distros to change their mind or accept you as a replacement for their original upstream than it really is.

[greenjeans]

Just saw your message. I'm glad you guys aren't upset with me for not being as enthusiastic about the GTK2 revival as everyone else, and seem to get where I'm coming from.

It sounds like you guys are a bit more serious about this, and are possibly creating a whole distro around the idea.

Oh no, not mad at all, it was a good and thoughtful post with very valid reservations, ones that even some of us on the team have had. We knew going into it that folks would be leery about it and with good reason. But i'd like to assure you we're not just old curmudgeons pining away for a long lost era, best analogy I can give being an old gearhead is we are dragging a vintage muscle car out of the barn it was parked in, and instead of doing a basic re-build we are doing a resto-mod, adding better and more modern engine parts, improved suspension and handling so it's not just a straight-line ride. It's actually been very exciting, there's a lot to do but watching it come to life is a great experience, Daemonratte has really outdone himself on this one, his work ethic and enthusiasm are very inspiring and our crew is growing as a result.

Screenie of Pale Moon running on gtk2-ng, click for the larger version, I was so tickled you guys are still doing a gtk2 version!:

[andyprough]

Oh no, not mad at all, it was a good and thoughtful post with very valid reservations, ones that even some of us on the team have had. We knew going into it that folks would be leery about it and with good reason. But i'd like to assure you we're not just old curmudgeons pining away for a long lost era, best analogy I can give being an old gearhead is we are dragging a vintage muscle car out of the barn it was parked in, and instead of doing a basic re-build we are doing a resto-mod, adding better and more modern engine parts, improved suspension and handling so it's not just a straight-line ride. It's actually been very exciting, there's a lot to do but watching it come to life is a great experience, Daemonratte has really outdone himself on this one, his work ethic and enthusiasm are very inspiring and our crew is growing as a result.

You know, Xlibre has brilliantly breathed life into Xorg, I know a ton of people that are using it now even though Xorg was seemingly left for dead less than a year ago. And these people who are using it are not stuck-in-the-past shaking-fist-at-the-clouds angry old men. They are just modern users on modern distros who are realistically saying that some of their systems work better with Wayland and some work better with Xlibre, and why not have both options? If Xorg was never going to get any updates then it was a no-brainer to try to move on from it, but Xlibre is quite alive and flourishing and makes total sense to use on all kinds of systems.

Maybe, hopefully, the same kind of revival can happen with gtk2-ng. I didn't look at it that way before, but it makes sense.

Also, welcome to the Pale Moon forum @greenjeans!!! What took you so long? You should have been here all along, this is a very vibrant and exciting place to be.

[greenjeans]

Also, welcome to the Pale Moon forum @greenjeans!!! What took you so long? You should have been here all along, this is a very vibrant and exciting place to be.

Thank you!! I'm seeing that and it's firing me up to do better.

10 years ago when I first began developing my distro project, I chose Pale Moon because it was just so much better than the somewhat commercial offerings, and users of it agreed enthusiastically, I once got 2000 downloads of my project over a couple of days which was a LOT to me.

Fast forward 10 years later in 2024 when I re-started the project, to save time I used what was in the repo and still have up until now, but just in the last week what with making the test-iso, and of course Pale Moon offering a gtk2 variant whereas nobody else did, I have remembered why I chose Pale Moon all those years ago...it's just head-n-shoulders better than everything i've tried. In addition to the test-iso, I am re-building the next version of my projects to use Pale Moon exclusively. Studying the terms of use carefully before I do so mind you, I want to get it right, but I am excited as can be going forward. I feel we are kindred spirits and there's some synergy in our philosophies, and the linux world as a whole will benefit from these massive efforts.

[Basilisk-Dev]

all your work is going in the retro Linux bin as a toy for Slackware and Devuan users to play with

This is an invalid point. Slackware and Devuan are perfectly capable of running GTK3, GTK4, and even Wayland if a user desires it, as well as modern GNOME and KDE. Do you think those distros are just for people who like old software or something?

[athenian200]

This is an invalid point. Slackware and Devuan are perfectly capable of running GTK3, GTK4, and even Wayland if a user desires it, as well as modern GNOME and KDE. Do you think those distros are just for people who like old software or something?

Well, my point was that if we never target anything newer, eventually those type of distros will be the only ones that can run our software. I think that point remains valid.

But yes, in all honesty, I think those type of distros are a bit more "stuck in the past" subjectively speaking than other distros, because it seems like people are more likely to use them to run older stuff than newer stuff even if running the newer stuff is also possible. But yeah, maybe it was a bit rude to put it that way since it sounds like I'm attacking those specific distros rather than Luddite attitudes that users around here have that might draw them to such distros. It's not really fair to people who might well run those distros but use more modern stuff. If that's the point you're making, I'll concede it, but I won't apologize for the rest.

The subtext for everything I'm saying is just that I'm fed up with having a userbase that wants to live in 2006-2012 forever, and will find every excuse in the book to keep us grounded in that era, whether it be forks of forks, obscure Linux distros, anything. I don't see why I should have to apologize for how I see things...

[Basilisk-Dev]

I don't see why I should have to apologize for how I see things...

I agree. The good news is that nobody asked you to do that from what I recall reading in this thread unless I missed something.

[mr tribute]

The subtext for everything I'm saying is just that I'm fed up with having a userbase that wants to live in 2006-2012 forever, and will find every excuse in the book to keep us grounded in that era, whether it be forks of forks, obscure Linux distros, anything. I don't see why I should have to apologize for how I see things...

No need to apologize, but there are contradictions...

Your favorite OS (OpenIndiana?) seems stuck in that time-frame you mention. How many technologies that gained traction in the last 10 - 15 years are available on OpenIndiana? How many modern init systems, desktop environments, display servers, audio servers and package formats are available on OpenIndiana?

To me it seems that you blame legacy users while at the same time embracing 15 year old technology. It doesn’t make sense to me...

More importantly about the Pale Moon project:

Based on forum activity it seems the Pale Moon user-base is legacy oriented. Not only on Linux, but also on Windows. Many people seem to be using Windows versions and Linux distros that are out of mainstream support. There aren’t really any comments on the Pale Moon forum that praise Windows 11 or the latest Linux distros. Instead you see comments about how bad Windows 11 is and how bad the latest Linux technologies are.

Pale Moon will always be a legacy browser until you can become Google and implement “web standards” across the web. You will always play catch-up with million/billion dollar companies.

There is nothing wrong with that. You are not a re-skinned Chromium browser. The core strength of Pale Moon will never be web compatibility, no matter how much work goes into Pale Moon.

The core strength of Pale Moon as I see it is single-process and thus low-end hardware that no other browser is suitable for. If you want privacy, customization and extensions there are other browsers available (not necessarily all in one package). But as far as I know there isn’t really another browser that can target low-end in the same way that Pale Moon can. I could be wrong about that. Most browsers seem to be Chromium or Firefox based and then multi-process will take its toll.

[andyprough]

There aren’t really any comments on the Pale Moon forum that praise Windows 11 or the latest Linux distros. Instead you see comments about how bad Windows 11 is and how bad the latest Linux technologies are.

Completely untrue. Most comments about GNU/Linux distros by users on this forum (not by developers) praise the latest versions of Mint and MX and Debian.

As far as Windows 11, well I believe it's just a general tradition among all Windows users that they have to complain about the new thing until another new version comes along, and then they have to complain about losing the thing they were previously complaining about. It's like a rite of passage. That's what I've perceived over the decades as an outside observer.

[Gemmaugr]

Off-topic:

If you want privacy, customization and extensions there are other browsers available (not necessarily all in one package).

I'd actually argue that Pale Moon does all of those better than any chromium/firefox browser.

[athenian200]

Your favorite OS (OpenIndiana?) seems stuck in that time-frame you mention. How many technologies that gained traction in the last 10 - 15 years are available on OpenIndiana? How many modern init systems, desktop environments, display servers, audio servers and package formats are available on OpenIndiana?

Well, it is still in active development, that is packages are being maintained and kept working. I see it as kind of in the position of trying to move forward but taking a while. And it's also not the only OS I use, I also use modern Windows, and occasionally Fedora. And it is worth noting that OI is not dependent on GTK2, but uses GTK3. And if even alternate operating systems that you seem to suggest are 15 years out of date are not on GTK2 anymore, but in fact support GTK3 reasonably well, then... not really seeing how that detracts from my point? But yeah, some of these technologies that are on Linux may only ever be suited to Linux and may not ever be the standard for all Unix-like operating systems. For instance, OI already has it's own SMF thing that's sort of like systemd in some ways, and in fact was doing a lot of what the newer init systems were praised for while Linux as a whole was still on sysvinit. The only thing really arguably "out-of-date" I've noticed is X11 instead of Wayland, and Wayland isn't exactly a universal POSIX standard anyway, at least not yet. Perhaps one day, but I'm sure that would take awhile, if it ever happens. Not that I doubt other systems could maintain their own X11 stack, like historically there was Xsun, and one of the BSDs has Xenocara, etc. Whether they go that route or follow Linux down the Wayland path, we'll see.

But yeah, to put it in context. I have a laptop with Windows 11 that I use for Office and all kinds of practical stuff. I have one desktop computer running OpenIndiana, and another running Windows Server 2022 because it's on an older machine that isn't really able to run Windows 11. And I think another machine that runs Fedora. So what I use is actually kind of a mixed bag.

Based on forum activity it seems the Pale Moon user-base is legacy oriented. Not only on Linux, but also on Windows. Many people seem to be using Windows versions and Linux distros that are out of mainstream support. There aren’t really any comments on the Pale Moon forum that praise Windows 11 or the latest Linux distros. Instead you see comments about how bad Windows 11 is and how bad the latest Linux technologies are.

Pale Moon will always be a legacy browser until you can become Google and implement “web standards” across the web. You will always play catch-up with million/billion dollar companies.

My opinion is that there's a difference between being a bit behind but trying to move forward slower, and just picking an era and freezing it. That's the frustration. See, my mental model was that the users expected X number of years of legacy support, maybe wanted a longer tail, but now I'm getting frustrated because they seem to want a specific era of hardware/software to be supported forever no matter how far out it gets. They don't care if it's 10 years, 20 years, maybe even 30 years out, they want the exact same thing and won't bring their expectations in line at all. I think that's what I'm getting annoyed with... like, let me explain my mindset a little. I don't think staying on XP during the Vista era and early during the 7 era was so bad. I don't think staying on 7 through the Windows 8 and early Windows 10 era was so bad... like, yeah, you can use older stuff... but after a certain point it gets a little ridiculous.

People think I am a tech optimist or something... it's really more like I'm looking at this in terms of years of legacy support and the difficulty of supporting an aging stack as it gets further and further out of date. There's just... in my mind, a certain point at which it stops being reasonable to use something older as a daily driver. Hopefully that makes sense and will be enough to get people to stop calling me out. LOL. :/

The way I look at it is this... no one gets mad we don't support Windows 3.11, no one gets mad we don't support Windows 95, no one gets mad we don't support Windows 2000. Some people get mad we don't support XP... then all of a sudden, you go past that era, and everyone is screaming at you that it's not okay to drop anything and acting like you're a traitor or thinking like a big corporation if you even suggest it. It's really annoying.

Like... with web standards, we do in fact move to support a lot of them but it takes longer. Which means forward motion. But if people just want something stuck in the past, maybe it should be stuck in the past in terms of web compat and security as well... in which case, why work on it more? LOL. Not serious, just trying to make a point. But yeah, I don't like this legacy box that users seem to want us to stay in, and the dismissive attitude towards any attempt to do better. It's like being lower-class and having everyone else around you tell you that you should be content with your station and not try to better yourself, that if you do you're a traitor and forgot where you came from or something.

[Theresnothinghere]

My opinion is that there's a difference between being a bit behind but trying to move forward slower, and just picking an era and freezing it. That's the frustration. See, my mental model was that the users expected X number of years of legacy support, maybe wanted a longer tail, but now I'm getting frustrated because they seem to want a specific era of hardware/software to be supported forever no matter how far out it gets. They don't care if it's 10 years, 20 years, maybe even 30 years out, they want the exact same thing and won't bring their expectations in line at all. I think that's what I'm getting annoyed with... like, let me explain my mindset a little. I don't think staying on XP during the Vista era and early during the 7 era was so bad. I don't think staying on 7 through the Windows 8 and early Windows 10 era was so bad... like, yeah, you can use older stuff... but after a certain point it gets a little ridiculous.

People think I am a tech optimist or something... it's really more like I'm looking at this in terms of years of legacy support and the difficulty of supporting an aging stack as it gets further and further out of date. There's just... in my mind, a certain point at which it stops being reasonable to use something older as a daily driver. Hopefully that makes sense and will be enough to get people to stop calling me out. LOL. :/

The way I look at it is this... no one gets mad we don't support Windows 3.11, no one gets mad we don't support Windows 95, no one gets mad we don't support Windows 2000. Some people get mad we don't support XP... then all of a sudden, you go past that era, and everyone is screaming at you that it's not okay to drop anything and acting like you're a traitor or thinking like a big corporation if you even suggest it. It's really annoying.

Hello, Windows Vista, 7, 8 user here, and I think it may be valuable to add another perspective to the discussion even if it's a bit off-topic in the GTK2 thread here

First thing I want to say is the reason I use Pale Moon is not because it supports Windows 7, nowadays there are also forks of both Firefox and Chromium for older systems and both work well, even have the nice Aero Glass effect on the titlebar ,
I use Pale Moon for privacy, addons, security and it not getting in the way with popups and weird behavior.

Would I stop using Pale Moon if no variant of it worked on Vista/7/8 - yes, but this is quite unlikely to happen [Deleted by moderator].
I also believe that people back then could have been more mad at the way one of the developers who is no longer working here handled the situation than the fact of the support being removed. (That being said XP and 7 are kinda special in a way they are the last ones of an era, and at the same time still very much usable to this day unlike say 95 or 98)

So as long as there is a clear path for a community fork for Windows 7 to exist (official branding or not), I don't mind that much that it won't be the official build (I already have to use the SSE2 buid on Vista). So I think the current way the project is being handled which is staying on VS2022 while reasonable and than moving forward is the right way to go, just please don't break things where it actually requires effort do so, like artificial version blocks, like some corporations do.

Now a little bit of rationale why I still use those older Windows versions:
1. When buying PC hardware without infinite budget, there is often the choice of either going for the old flagship thing or the new mid/low end. The current mid/low end usually has the advantage of being higher performance, but the old flagship usually comes ahead in the build quality, keyboard and overall feel. So why not have both advantages by buying the old model and installing the older operating system for a responsive snappy experience
2. The older the software and newer the hardware the faster everything runs (assuming it runs at all and drivers are available). Devs usually optimize for the current era hardware until it runs well-enough so running an older operating system on new hardware is the only way you can get the best performance and lowest background activity percentage & battery savings.
3. Older software usually has much better privacy and less annoyances
4. Perhaps the most important one: updates on both current Linux and Windows sometimes break things and I like knowing that the next day when I have something important to do my computer will work in exactly the same predictable way it did the previous day. And if it doesn't it's much easier to diagnose hardware failure if you know software hasn't changed.
5. I like the Aero design

So there are valid reasons for using older operating systems, yes, I didn't mention the downsides the most important being the lack of security patches. I do what I can by blocking ports with firewall and disabling services, and I also wouldn't run an old server, so it's not for every use case and not for everyone.

[Moonchild]

There's a bit of nuance here.
Yes, there are absolutely valid reasons to run older operating systems, discontinued toolkits, etc. No issue with that. But the difference is: are those valid reasons also a reason for devs to explicitly target, put large effort into, or spend significant time on? The answer to that is often "no". The same reasons to run older things would come with the reality that you may have to run old versions of applications on top. Trying to force the mix of old and new isn't always possible.
I'm pretty sure our development will move forward with alternatives to GTK2, and when we actively support those, support for GTK2 may wane. If for nothing else but the impossibility to reasonably support every toolkit under the sun at the same time (and still have time to do anything else). That just isn't what our focus can be.
Of note: Windows doesn't really have that problem because Microsoft has kept the Win32 API and interaction with the desktop fairly stable. But even there, things will inevitably move towards newer things and support for Win 7 and 8 will drop if it can no longer be reasonably supported.

[Night Wing]

I am one of those who use, at this time, the newest 64 bit GTK2 build of linux Pale Moon (34.3.0.1). And I have been following the posts in this topic thread.

So it looks like I will just have to "bite the bullet" on the next version of Pale Moon to see if the linux GTK3 build will work for me with the current 64 bit distros of MX Linux and Debian which I use.

[biopsin]

There is the option to patch gtk3 and undo some of the crazy but it too has its limits..
https://github.com/lah7/gtk3-classic

[athenian200]

So it looks like I will just have to "bite the bullet" on the next version of Pale Moon to see if the linux GTK3 build will work for me with the current 64 bit distros of MX Linux and Debian which I use.

Just to put this in perspective... this isn't something that's going to change with Pale Moon 35 or probably even Pale Moon 36. My point of talking about it now is saying that GTK2 isn't our future, not that it isn't the present and won't remain supported for as long as we can reasonably do so.

More than likely distros will drop support for GTK2 before we do.