GTK+ 2 Development Initiative

[Schimon]

Greetings.

I am not fond of GTK+ 5 which has support of protocol X (XLibre) removed for no appropriate reason;

I am not fond of GTK+ 4, albeit it is lesser bad than GTK+ 3; and

I am not fond of GTK+ 3, due to its unecessary requirement of additional resources.

I think that, GTK+ 2 is the best that GTK+ has ever had to offer.

I further think that, the development of GTK+ 2 should persist.

Software that are, or were, built upon GTK+ 2 and which I utilize.

aMule
Ardour (YTK)
Asunder
Claws Mail (GTK+ 3)
EBoard (XBoard)
EDuke32
ePDFView
FPM2 (GTK+ 3)
Gabber
Gaupol (GTK+ 3)
Geany (GTK+ 3)
gFTP
GHex (GTK+ 3)
GIMP (GTK+ 3)
gMTP (GTK+ 3)
gmrun (GTK+ 3)
Gnumeric (GTK+ 3)
Gossip
GParted (GTK+ 3)
gPodder (GTK+ 3)
Gslapt (GTK+ 3)
GSmartControl (GTK+ 3)
GTK-GNUTELLA
Inkscape (GTK+ 3)
Liferea (GTK+ 3)
Linux DC++
LSHW (GTK+ 3)
LXDE
MATE (GTK +3)
Meld (GTK+ 3)
Nicotine+ (GTK+ 3)
Pale Moon
PCManFM (Qt 5)
Quod Libet (GTK+ 3)
RFDump
Sakura
Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection (GTK+ 3)
Smuxi
Snes9x
Sunflower
Viewnior (GTK+ 3)
Viking (GTK+ 3)
WireShark (Qt 5)
Xfce (GTK+ 3)

Some projects were ported to GTK+ 3; yet, as one of the prime purposes of these mentioned projects is to be usable, not fancy, I deem that when the developers thereof be aware of an intiatibe to improve and maintain GTK+2, then some, if not all, of them would be interested to support GTK+ 2, again.

GTK2 status in Artix

2025-10-03

Arch is phasing GTK2 out of its repositories. This entails the renaming and removing packages: the newer -gtk[34] which replace old GTK2 ones drop their suffix and the latter are removed.

Artix will keep GTK2 and dependent packages (for as long as they build without much patching) in [galaxy]. Notable ones are LXDE (package group lxde-gtk2) and hexchat. Until the rebuild operation and testing is completed, these packages shall reside in [galaxy-gremlins]. Please understand that they will not be actively supported and help in maintaining is appreciated.

Please follow the GTK2 forum thread for information and updates.

https://blog.lxde.org/2013/04/25/a-guid ... ons-to-qt/

https://blog.wireshark.org/2013/10/switching-to-qt/

https://phoronix.com/news/Ardour-Removes-GTK-Option

https://sourceforge.net/p/gtk-gnutella/ ... nth=202603

[Daemonratte]

Hey Schimon!

I 100% agree with you. That's why I decided to further maintain gtk2.
https://git.devuan.org/Daemonratte/gtk2 ... nch/master

I already talked about this on the Artix forum
https://forum.artixlinux.org/index.php/ ... 64.15.html

[Schimon]

Daemonratte. I am pleased by your announcement!

That be very useful to me, as I want to develop with Pascal which is already supported by GTK+ 2; and add have Python 3 version supported also.

This is a news software which is made with Pascal and GTK+ 2.

https://github.com/norayr/tomar

Publication

Shall we establish an (X)HTML site and forums of your project?

We might want to utilize Rivista Voyager, to publish resources, references, and announcements over Gemini, HTTP, and XMPP; and, I can improve Rivista to comply with your requirements.

https://git.xmpp-it.net/sch/Rivista

[Daemonratte]

Nice project!

About the project site: Unfortunately my country forces people to publish their real name and address for hosting a website that provides more than just simple stuff.

It would be nice to have a platform for the gtk2 revival though. Right now I just posted about this on a few forums.The ultimate goal is to create an entire Desktop Environment (based on GNOME2 or rather the last gtk2 version of Mate) with a suite of revived gtk2 software. Kind of like Trinity Desktop Environment keeps a fork of QT3 and KDE3 alive.

I also want to help spread the use of Pale Moon and it's browser engine again by reviving GtkMozEmbed (allowing people to embed the engine in a gtk2 application).
I've also been thinking about getting a rebranded Pale Moon into OpenBSD and NetBSD. I mean, nobody is using the name Iceweasel anymore, so why not just use that?

[Schimon]

Nice project!

Thank you. I did not even expect to create a generalized and interoperable publishing platform which is solely made of XML.

About the project site: Unfortunately my country forces people to publish their real name and address for hosting a website that provides more than just simple stuff.

I am willing to be the one to manage the site, until you will not be subjected to that regulation.

It would be nice to have a platform for the gtk2 revival though. Right now I just posted about this on a few forums.The ultimate goal is to create an entire Desktop Environment (based on GNOME2 or rather the last gtk2 version of Mate) with a suite of revived gtk2 software. Kind of like Trinity Desktop Environment keeps a fork of QT3 and KDE3 alive.

That be good to do.

It would also be a good opportunity to have desktop software that be disintegrated and independent from each other, unlike these of GNOME2. I suppose that, a significant amount of people who have migrated to Xfce due to the unnecessary integrality of GNOME2 would have an interest at such initiative.

I also want to help spread the use of Pale Moon and it's browser engine again by reviving GtkMozEmbed (allowing people to embed the engine in a gtk2 application).
I've also been thinking about getting a rebranded Pale Moon into OpenBSD and NetBSD. I mean, nobody is using the name Iceweasel anymore, so why not just use that?

You can set Pale Moon as a premier (i.e. "flag") project of GTK+2-NG; that should be a good promotion.

As Erlang has the world renowned XMPP server eJabberd as a project which represents the good of Erlang; and OCaml has MLDonkey as its famous project; so GTK+2-NG can have Pale Moon as such.

[Schimon]

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