XFCE and Qt: how crazy would that be?

the98 · 2014-06-28 00:13:58

After reading all the complications about GTK3, and with a lot of applications, such as the almighty Audacious thinking about migrating to Qt, I'm wondering weather XFCE team is thinking about migrating, and how crazy would that be.

I personally think that this change is impossible, or very very very very complicated. But, with the road GTK libraries are taking, is it really that crazy to think about that possibility?

Don't get me wrong, I love GTK, but I love GTK2, which is going to be obsolete in a few years. And I don't like GTK3 at all.

In the meantime, I've just read that LXDE is going to have a QT port: http://lxqt.org/

D:

Last edited by the98 (2014-06-28 00:14:53)

MountainDewManiac · 2014-06-28 22:23:23

Why is it going to be obsolete? Will it quit working? Will it be incompatible with newer hardware? Does it have an expiration date, lol?

Or will they get to the point that they are no longer in danger of breaking things when they release a new version of GTK3, encourage people to switch to it, and work on creating the perception that GTK2 is obsolete?

Regards,
MDM

the98 · 2014-06-29 01:31:18

Are you still using applications that run on GTK 1.0?

That's your answer right there. But discussing something obvious, like all developers moving towards GTK3 and leaving GTK2 behind (eventually), is not the point of this thread. I don't think it's a matter of GTK2 been obsolete, but something that just goes with the flow. I'm mean, do you XFCE can ignore the change and continue to be based on GTK2 while everything else isn't? :-/

Magnus · 2014-06-30 03:44:04

It's not going to happen as the devs have already began porting to GTK+ 3 and they are so busy ~snip~ they haven't gotten around to that yet.

Last edited by ToZ (2014-11-01 03:33:59)

the98 · 2014-06-30 15:57:17

I wouldn't call someone that's giving you a fully operational desktop environment, that's completely free, "lazy".

MountainDewManiac · 2014-06-30 17:13:27

the98, I see a button to report a bad post, but no button to praise an excellent one. So: Kudos to you, sir (or ma'am, whichever applies).

Regards,
MDM

the98 · 2014-07-01 01:09:42

Sir.

Thanks MDM. Regards.

IcyEyeG · 2014-07-01 10:30:13

I'd be even better if XFCE could collaborate with the LXQt team on this (just like LXDE and Razor-Qt joined forces). I'm not talking about a merger, but a strong common base. XFCE could still be XFCE, with its default programs and panel layout/plugins.

Last edited by IcyEyeG (2014-07-01 10:30:33)

gxagar · 2014-07-01 20:08:54

MDM,

+1 on your kudos to the98

IcyEyeG · 2014-07-04 19:58:19

MountainDewManiac wrote:

Why is it going to be obsolete? Will it quit working? Will it be incompatible with newer hardware? Does it have an expiration date, lol?
Or will they get to the point that they are no longer in danger of breaking things when they release a new version of GTK3, encourage people to switch to it, and work on creating the perception that GTK2 is obsolete?
Regards,
MDM

On that note, is GTK2 going to be ported to Wayland?

the98 · 2014-07-07 21:19:30

IcyEyeG wrote:

I'd be even better if XFCE could collaborate with the LXQt team on this (just like LXDE and Razor-Qt joined forces). I'm not talking about a merger, but a strong common base. XFCE could still be XFCE, with its default programs and panel layout/plugins.

I don't agree, because LxQt can be its own thing, while XFCE is a totally different thing, even though they both share the same concept. I wouldn't mind seeing and migrating to a Qt version of XFCE, if this GTK inconsistencies keep going on (I hope not).

Korrode · 2014-07-22 11:08:44

GTK2 is still maintained.

Last bugfix commit was 2 days ago:
https://git.gnome.org/browse/gtk+/log/?h=gtk-2-24

On a rolling release using GTK3 outside of Gnome is terrible. Personally i sincerely hope GTK2 support will remain, or Qt will be chosen over GTK3 as the new toolkit for Xfce.

I realise most people are on time-based releases and probably don't understand how screwed things get when GTK3 gets updated, but on a rolling-release, you know.

Gabriel_M · 2014-08-12 00:45:18

I personally think that this option Xfce & Qt, is it really that crazy to think about that possibility!

jansucan · 2014-08-17 10:46:34

I would be happy, if XFCE switched to Qt. But not necessarily to Qt - to any object-oriented toolkit which is practically usable in object-oriented development as well. This point from gtkmm FAQ on GTK is also my opinion:

Inheritance can be used to derive new widgets. The derivation of new widgets in GTK+ C code is so complicated and error prone that almost no C coders do it. As a C++ developer you know that derivation is an essential Object Orientated technique.

( https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/gtkmm/FAQ )

And the question is how many of those who do it, do it right. That's also the reason why I quit maintaining mailwatch plugin. But I remain happy XFCE user because I didn't find a better DE for me yet.

rjdohnert · 2014-08-27 05:28:00

With Black Lab Linux we are currently working on a certain degree of QT integration. My goal is to get QT based apps and even some KDE apps to run without having to download the full KDE base. So far we have had pretty good success with the Kpatience suit, Kontact and a few others but the work is onging.

Roberto J. Dohnert
Lead Developer
Black Lab Linux
http://www.blacklablinux.org

hacknix · 2014-09-11 14:15:11

Given the fact that I'm not a coder my opinion might not be that qualified, but nonetheless I have one. Considering that not even gtk3 support is fully implemented yet, and that gtk3 still changes a lot from version to version, also still breaks user themes, outside developers are not supported by gnome project etc., and at the same time people start to complain already about no wayland support in xfce, I assume moving completely to QT would be indeed a smart move especially for the future of xfce. I can't judge the practical implications of such an undertaking from the technical point of view, though.

Methos · 2014-09-14 08:17:17

I'm not into gtk, so I can't judge the difficulties migrating from gtk2 to gtk3. If it's really as complicated as it was mentioned, a switch to Qt may be discussable. But then I would say that a merge of lxqt and xfce is the only possible way. (Or at least a very strong cooperation of both projects.)
One shouldn't forget that the programming language behind gtk is C, while Qt's background is C++. These languages are completly different, so a switch to Qt would most likely involve a complete rewrite of xfce. And if I look to the momentary man-power of xfce and how much xfce is "already behind the schedule" releasing xfce 4.12, I don't think that a Qt version of xfce would be realistic.

hpp3 · 2015-01-11 20:29:43

I for one would welcome our new Qt overlords, but I think GTK2 is far from dead, and will probably be forked rather than roll over to GTK3 if the Gnome devs keep making a mess of GTK3 for their own ends. If that happens, GTK3 will become a 'dog-food' project and no-one outside of developing for Gnome will use it.

Regarding GTK2 and C as it relates to Xfce, read this bit of history:
http://xfc.xfce.org/history.html
TL;DR - Xfce is heavily integrated with the Xfce Foundation Classes, which are written in C++.

Regarding merging LXDE and Xfce, I don't think that's a good idea at all. LXDE may be cited as an example of how successful a toolkit transition can be, but beyond that, LXDE(Qt) and Xfce have different methodologies and goals in mind as far as how to go about making a successful Desktop Environment. I have used LXDE in the past and found it nice, but lacking (not a criticism; it is meant to be minimalist), and haven't yet tried LXQt, but I love Xfce and will continue to use it for as long as it remains alive. Gnome can drop off a cliff and I wouldn't miss it.

sixsixfive · 2015-01-12 12:26:41

The good thing about GNOME and their ignorance is that Qt could become something like the default widget library in the future, so it could really end this Qt app looks ugly on GTK desktop issue. And the biggest advantage of Qt is probably that it is cross-platform, so you will reach/serve more users that are interested in bug reporting and patching

>Gnome can drop off a cliff and I wouldn't miss it.

exactly, but at the same time I don't get why such an ignorant project gets so much attention (just look how many distributions switched to systemd just because of it)

oyvinds · 2015-01-20 11:48:49

There are some good reasons why I would not like to see a QT-based XFCE4 but it does seem to be the least bad alternative.

Sticking with gtk2 would probably be best but this would require someone to fork it and work on it. Either someone makes a fork or it dies.

Gtk3 is sadly no alternative, the GNOME people have made sure of that. It is no longer a general purpose toolkit but a GNOME3 toolshit not suitable for anything, they have ruined it for general-purpose applications (you know, the ones who run just as fine under fluxbox or xfce4 or kde or whatever) and alternative desktops so that's no alternative.

I actually find it very sad that we're basically left with QT because RedHat/GNOME decided to change gtk from being a general purpose toolkit to a GNOME-tied library with gtk3. How are we supposed to get the nations to submit to the gnu world order when we don't even have a decient toolkit to offer?

MountainDewManiac · 2015-01-20 14:03:11

oyvinds wrote:

There are some good reasons why I would not like to see a QT-based XFCE4 but it does seem to be the least bad alternative.

They're probably not good reasons, but my reasons are that all of the applications that I have installed that use one of the toolkits appear to use GTKsomething (I think the developers are currently calling it GTK+, but putting a plus in its name seems like putting "Deluxe" in one of Hitler's Jewish concentration camps, lol, only in slightly worse taste), since they're both apparently installed on my system. Also, because in the past when I installed two Qt applications (K3B and a graphical version of Nethack), they installed the Qt stuff and still ended up looking like they'd been designed by that poor monkey that the scientists got hooked on cocaine so that they could count how many times he'd push the "cocaine" button in his cage before he starved to death from Jonesing too bad to bother hitting the "food" button (I think it was something like 14,238 times... Which makes me kind of sad, mad, and satisfied; sad because someone ought to have held the poor SoB down and force-fed him a cheeseburger or at least bought him a little cocaine and a cigarette, mad because the last time I bought ammo to go hunting the woman at the cash register looked at ME like I was being cruel to animals (no ma'am, I always try to kill them immediately with one shot because I don't like walking around all day in the woods looking for animals that didn't even have the courtesy to fall over dead when I shot them roll ), and satisfied because I just remembered the time that a friend and I went fishing and one of those weird deviant PETA types (you know, the people who rant about normal people who cook and eat animals that are safely and obviously dead, but think nothing of eating plants just because you can't hear them scream, lofl, and I'm pretty sure if you bury a potato it'll start growing so it's still alive... and those people toss them into ovens) decided to start beating on the water with a long pole trying to scare the fish away (I guess?)... and my buddy tied his giant largemouth bass lure on (it had several treble-hooks on it) and "accidentally" casted it over the freak & managed to get it stuck in his ear... Well, mostly in his ear - I figure it must have hooked the PETAphile's cheek, too, because it turns out to be remarkably easy to rip someone's ear right off their head and my buddy yanked on the fishing rod (the deviant looked like one of those cartoon characters that had just been clotheslined, it was awesome) but instead of reeling in some catfish-bait... he lost his lure (forgot to adjust the drag, lol). But I digress... Anyway, those two apps ended up looking pretty bad, like there wasn't enough room in them for the text, so the tops/bottoms of all the words were cut off (IIRC). I'd hate to see a bunch of applications end up looking like that, but mainly I'd just worry about having to install both GTKminus and Qt to cover both the apps and the DE, since I occasionally find old computers in dumpsters and clean them up & install linux on them so that I can give them to people who are even more poor than I am - and some of the computers are pretty old, so low memory/CPU.

oyvinds wrote:

Sticking with gtk2 would probably be best but this would require someone to fork it and work on it. Either someone makes a fork or it dies.

Why, are the owners of GTK2 going to rescind the "you can use this as much as you like" license and demand that it be withdrawn from the world? Or are there potential security issues that could occur, requiring someone to issue a fix?

oyvinds wrote:

Gtk3 is sadly no alternative, the GNOME people have made sure of that. It is no longer a general purpose toolkit but a GNOME3 toolshit not suitable for anything, they have ruined it for general-purpose applications (you know, the ones who run just as fine under fluxbox or xfce4 or kde or whatever) and alternative desktops so that's no alternative.

I don't really have anything against GTK3. Well... Other than the fact that I don't see the point of it, really. Going from GTK2 to GTK3 is sort of like... Hmm... The phrase "t!ts on a boar hog" comes to mind, but IDK if that'll make it past the censors because some folks might be oddly Victorian in their outlook (which is, in itself, a strange phrase since - by all accounts - the things that went on in Victorian times were enough to curl one's toes - if not their teeth, lol). So I'll just say that there's no point in the direction they appear to have taken it, since someone has already invented the hammer and it's (somewhat) more reliable a way to break one's system than the "hit or miss" approach of breaking it that GTK3 uses which only manages to successfully break things about half the time.

oyvinds wrote:

I actually find it very sad that we're basically left with QT because RedHat/GNOME decided to change gtk from being a general purpose toolkit to a GNOME-tied library with gtk3. How are we supposed to get the nations to submit to the gnu world order when we don't even have a decient toolkit to offer?

I guess it really is a shame that there is no one qualified - and willing - to fork GTK2. They could call it "The GTK That ISN'T a /Fail" or, if that is too unwieldy, "NOT Garbage." If the person who did it agreed to sign some kind of long-term binding contract stating he would develop it for adults who just wanted to get some work done instead of for kids and mouthbreathers... I'd send him/her a dollar wink .

But I suspect that I'm rambling because I've been unable to sleep for, IDK, about three days and counting. So I better end this post before it starts to get lengthy.

Regards,
MDM

dollyp · 2015-01-20 15:06:45

Wow! Get some sleep, man.

Methos · 2015-01-26 21:59:28

@hpp3
Thanks for the Xfce Foundation Classes Link.
Maybe, you're right about my merge "idea". Maybe it's just because I'm a little tired about this desktop crazyness... I really like the possibility to choose between different desktop environment, I would be sad either if there would be only gnome and kde, but... Unity, mate, cinnamon, gnome, kde, xfce, enlightenment, pantheon, lxde/lxqt... And quite sure, that many of these are in need of developers...
And maybe it's because I had this wish of something like a rock solid kde... and a merge of xfce and lxqt sound promising, somehow... Yes, kde has become pretty stable since the beginning of kde4 (I'm using it currently), but there are still some flaws here and there, which I've never seen with Xfce.

@MountainDewManiac
1. If Xfce would be based on qt you won't need GTK for the DE any longer.
2. It is possible to create beautiful applications with qt. (As it is possible to create real terrible UIs with gtk..)
3. There will be needed bugfixes or security fixes for gtk2. And because gnome won't do that any longer, a fork would be necessary.
4. The world changed in the past, the world is changing and it'll be changing in the future, so an active development of such things like a framework (like gtk or qt) is necessary. Even the programming languages (in which such frameworks are written) have changed over the years. Some are not longer used, others have changed quite a lot; like C++, Java, Python et cetera. Why? Because the world has changed, because there was room for improvements.

@Xfce devs
By the way...
Thanks for your work! Even if I'm currently doesn't use it anymore, I still appreciate it a lot.

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#1 2014-06-28 00:13:58

XFCE and Qt: how crazy would that be?

#2 2014-06-28 22:23:23

Re: XFCE and Qt: how crazy would that be?

#3 2014-06-29 01:31:18

Re: XFCE and Qt: how crazy would that be?

#4 2014-06-30 03:44:04

Re: XFCE and Qt: how crazy would that be?

#5 2014-06-30 15:57:17

Re: XFCE and Qt: how crazy would that be?

#6 2014-06-30 17:13:27

Re: XFCE and Qt: how crazy would that be?

#7 2014-07-01 01:09:42

Re: XFCE and Qt: how crazy would that be?

#8 2014-07-01 10:30:13

Re: XFCE and Qt: how crazy would that be?

#9 2014-07-01 20:08:54

Re: XFCE and Qt: how crazy would that be?

#10 2014-07-04 19:58:19

Re: XFCE and Qt: how crazy would that be?

#11 2014-07-07 21:19:30

Re: XFCE and Qt: how crazy would that be?

#12 2014-07-22 11:08:44

Re: XFCE and Qt: how crazy would that be?

#13 2014-08-12 00:45:18

Re: XFCE and Qt: how crazy would that be?

#14 2014-08-17 10:46:34

Re: XFCE and Qt: how crazy would that be?

#15 2014-08-27 05:28:00

Re: XFCE and Qt: how crazy would that be?

#16 2014-09-11 14:15:11

Re: XFCE and Qt: how crazy would that be?

#17 2014-09-14 08:17:17

Re: XFCE and Qt: how crazy would that be?

#18 2015-01-11 20:29:43

Re: XFCE and Qt: how crazy would that be?

#19 2015-01-12 12:26:41

Re: XFCE and Qt: how crazy would that be?

#20 2015-01-20 11:48:49

Re: XFCE and Qt: how crazy would that be?

#21 2015-01-20 14:03:11

Re: XFCE and Qt: how crazy would that be?

#22 2015-01-20 15:06:45

Re: XFCE and Qt: how crazy would that be?

#23 2015-01-26 21:59:28

Re: XFCE and Qt: how crazy would that be?

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