Who provides gtk2 support

[advice1010]

I apologize I don't really know where to post this one, all depends on the response.

I am a little confused about something and I was hoping someone could clarify some questions I have about gtk2.
I have one (portable / standalone) program that I am using that is gtk2 based, that I don't think the developer has any plans to upgrade to gtk3 / gtk4. It does have a qt5 version if all else fails in the future, but currently I feel the gtk2 version functions better in XFCE (gtk environment) so I would like to keep on using it if possible).

I have seen a couple different view points on this that kind of conflict.
I was wondering who is responsible for gtk2 still being supported?
I have read some say it depends on your Linux distro because it is based on packages provided,
but I have also seen it mentioned linked to if your DE continues to support it? I was wondering which is correct?
Could be kind of tricky wording, because if a DE is really just a set of modular components, then when a DE is said to not support it, could mean that the actual DE components themselves don't support gtk2? If this makes sense.

It was mentioned that even if gtk2 is no longer supported by Distro or DE, that users can still download the packages that would add the support back, was wondering how accurate this is as well?
However I have also had others mention not to continue using any gtk2 applications.

So just not sure what is correct, for either of these questions mentioned above.

Thank You for any help provided

[timkb4cq]

The Gtk organization designated Gtk2 as EOL almost three years ago. There is no upstream support for it. Gtk3 & Gtk4 are currently supported.
As far as MX is concerned, any Gtk2 libraries we ship are provided by Debian. They will likely address any serious security issues that arise but I would not expect anything more.

[dolphin_oracle]

gtk2 is still around. I think gimp is still gtk2.

however, its basically legacy code.

[TTwrs]

I use this to discover which installed packages depend on gtk2...

# list apps that depend on gtk2...
apt-cache rdepends --installed libgtk2.0-0 | tail -n +3 | sort

I have a few that I hope will not stop working if/when gtk2 goes away.

[AVLinux]

I use this to discover which installed packages depend on gtk2...

# list apps that depend on gtk2...
apt-cache rdepends --installed libgtk2.0-0 | tail -n +3 | sort

I have a few that I hope will not stop working if/when gtk2 goes away.

I would start preparing for it to go away, I think it even may have been discussed when GTK4 was added to Debian but there was probably still concern for legacy app support but that won't last forever, they removed QT4 from Debian 11 pretty abruptly, this lack of toolkit continuity is Linux' biggest disadvantage sadly..

[ghunter]

@advice1010
Can you name the ones you like please and read below to prepare to keep them.

I am a fan of gtk2 apps so disagree.

Lets look at nice post by TTwrs

Code: Select all

apt-cache rdepends --installed libgtk2.0-0 | tail -n +3 | sort
  gkrellm
  gtkdialog
  hardinfo
  libfm-gtk4
  libgail18
  libgail-common
  libgimp2.0
  libgimp2.0
  libglade2-0
  libgtk2.0-common
  lxappearance
  lxrandr
  mtr
  pcmanfm
  pinentry-gtk2
  qt5-gtk2-platformtheme
  xsane

I use pcmanfm. Its not likely to update.
Now we look at what packages might update that might mean we (meaning me and some other gtk2 fans) need to recompile pcmanfm when some of its dependencies are updated meaning that pcmanfm will not find certain shared objects.

Right now I have dependencies as

Code: Select all

sudo readelf -d /usr/bin/pcmanfm | grep 'NEEDED'
0x0000000000000001 (NEEDED)             Shared library: [libX11.so.6]
 0x0000000000000001 (NEEDED)             Shared library: [libfm-gtk.so.4]
 0x0000000000000001 (NEEDED)             Shared library: [libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0]
 0x0000000000000001 (NEEDED)             Shared library: [libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0]
 0x0000000000000001 (NEEDED)             Shared library: [libpangocairo-1.0.so.0]
 0x0000000000000001 (NEEDED)             Shared library: [libatk-1.0.so.0]
 0x0000000000000001 (NEEDED)             Shared library: [libcairo.so.2]
 0x0000000000000001 (NEEDED)             Shared library: [libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0]
 0x0000000000000001 (NEEDED)             Shared library: [libpango-1.0.so.0]
 0x0000000000000001 (NEEDED)             Shared library: [libfm.so.4]
 0x0000000000000001 (NEEDED)             Shared library: [libgio-2.0.so.0]
 0x0000000000000001 (NEEDED)             Shared library: [libgobject-2.0.so.0]
 0x0000000000000001 (NEEDED)             Shared library: [libglib-2.0.so.0]
 0x0000000000000001 (NEEDED)             Shared library: [libpthread.so.0]
 0x0000000000000001 (NEEDED)             Shared library: [libc.so.6]

I don't think libfm is going to change but me thinks glib2 could become glib3 or libcairo2 could become libcairo3....the package name is not important its the shared object name that matters.

I have compiled software before but not made debian packages. But if pcmanfm is one that you like, we can discuss future plans if interested

[AVLinux]

@ghunter

To be clear I'm not at all suggesting a dislike for gtk2 or any desire to see it become obsolete... so we don't disagree... I'm simply being realistic as we've seen this movie before several times in Linuxdom and the odds are not great... That said KDE3 is still alive and well in the Trinity fork so miracles can happen..

[figueroa]

@ghunter, PCManFM source is already working with GTK3. In fact, the entire LXDE family and OpenBox run on GTK3. For the long-term, one must think outside of the Debian stable box.

[Stevo]

The MX set of tools are all Qt 5, and coexist fine with the GTK 3 XFCE 4.18.

I would not worry about contaminating a GTK desktop with Qt. There are a lot more things to worry about than that.

[advice1010]

Wow thank you guys for all the responses.

@timkb4cq
Ahh okay, so this is correct that the Linux distro determines whether gtk2 packages / support is provided, but in this case with MX it is the Linux distro, that the Linux MX distro is based on :) providing the gtk2 support.
So as long as Debian still supports gtk2 then gtk2 application should continue to work (as they did when the code reach EOL)

@dolphin_oracle
Man you really are like an “oracle”, many times when you respond to any of my post it is always like an awakening moment, you are right, I totally forgot that GIMP is also still based on gtk2, which is actually suprising the more you think about, being that it is such a popular program / project. Also very ironic that they are the creators of the toolkit to begin with :)
I have been messing around with trying to change gtk2 fonts, this gives me another program for my testing thank you.

@TTwrs
Thank you for this command

@AVLinux
I was going to ask if anyone knew how Debian has handled similar issues in the past, I did not know about QT4, not sure why they would do this "abrubtly".
Yeah it seems like there a couple things in Linux that really seem to / could lead to certain programs not working in the future. Seems strange to think that certain programs may not / not easily just work in the future.

@ghunter
Not the same program, but good to know that others are concerned / thinking about this as well.
It sounds like yours may be okay, if what is mentioned above is true on your system.

@Stevo
Not necessarily worried about Qt applications on a GTK system, MX comes with quite a few Qt programs,
just that the Qt version of this application takes noticeably longer to load and also have some GTK based plugins. What I did not know is that all the MX Tools were Qt as well, being that XFCE is its flagship DE I would not have guessed that, but they work great so does not really matter to me :)

As mentioned what was also confusing me was how I have seen mentioned that certain DEs no longer support gtk2, I know not true but I often view DE as the "OS" but they are for example, XFCE modular group of programs themselves, so when it is said that they don't support it, it is that the actual DE applications don't support it and has nothing to do if 3rd party programs are supported or not.

So Debian might abruptly just stop supporting this at some point and if they do then MX will lose the support as well. GIMP being such a popular project, wonder if this is one that is helping to keep gtk2 available, I read that they very recently made the switch to gtk3? but definitely version 3.x will be updated.
Not sure how old what I read was but is Synaptic gtk2 still?

So if this does occur then I have seen mentioned that users will have to learn to complile gtk2 packages if they want to still use programs that are no longer being developed?

Thank you all again for the responses