The future of Xfce (or beating the Gtk3 horse to death)

[Ivan Hernandez]

Hi guys,

No fearmonguering! Remember when everything switched from gtk 1.2 to gtk
2.0. It was a pain in the ass. Everything looked horrible. But back in that
ages the only real desktop using gtk was Gnome. Yes, xfce 3.8 was there but
was more like an UDE clone with motif default themes, and linux desktops
where rarely found in the wild. People where still browsing the web with
netscape / lynx, OpenOffice was StarOffice, no desktop integration, TkInter
everywhere, perl, fltk, foxlibs, etc. Nobody cared about how ugly anything
looked because everything was segfauting all the time so eyecandy was a
secondary issue.

Now it's a different time and people expects linux desktops to be more
consistent and pretty, but that doesn't mean that having gtk3 and gtk2 apps
mixed up is an apocalypse. We already had qt and gtk for a long time. So
either xfce, lxde, chrome, libreoffice and every other gtk based project
will go for gtk3 or gtk2 will be forked into a new project. That's how
everything works.

If Gnome3 is adopted by all major distributions then gtk3 will become once
again (against any technical argument) the standard toolkit and any desktop
using anything else gonna face integration problems at the user interface
level with any big app out there (libreoffice, firefox, chrome, gimp, etc).

So, seems to be a wise option to wait until the gtk3 api settles down a
little, in case it becomes the new standard, and then, start migrating the
apps, one by one.

Best regards
Ivan

2013/3/18 Martin crysman Zahradník <crysman at seznam.cz>

> Thanks for the issues, I've just read the middle "conspiracy" article...
> and it is very sad and scary :(
> I am not an active developer, so I do not know where should(not) Xfce
> go, but... certainly, these are very important issues.
>
> Thanks
> regards
> McZ
>
> --
> Martin crysman Zahradník
> www: http://crysmanovo.blogspot.com
> e-mail: crysman at seznam.cz
> jabber: crysman at jabber.org
> gtalk: crysmanovo at gmail.com
> Skype: no way! using Ekiga - SIP:crysman at ekiga.net
> running GNU/Linux Xubuntu
>
> On 18.3.2013 20:54, Liviu Andronic wrote:
> > Dear all,
> > After reading a couple of horror stories on the evolution of Gtk3 (and
> > Gnome 3), I'm once again pondering the likely future of Xfce.
> > http://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/gnome-et-al-rotting-in-threes/
> > http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/opinion/a-linux-conspiracy-theory
> >
> http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/opensource/gnome-is-simply-losing-its-grasp/3834
> >
> > If those stories hold even remotely true, it seems that Gtk3 minor
> > releases follow hand in hand with Gnome3 releases, including
> > (Apple-style-) breaking of 3rd party applications on each new release.
> > Some even go to the extremes of saying: “GTK 3 isn’t a reliable API.
> > Maybe it should be called libgnome instead… I genuinely get the
> > feeling that GTK 3.4 is developed for GNOME 3.4, that it doesn’t
> > really matter if it breaks things and that we’re not supposed to use
> > it outside of GNOME.” This eerily recalls me Apple-related horror
> > stories.
> >
> > So if Gtk3 indeed evolves to become incompatible with Xfce by having
> > hitherto standard functionality removed, what would Xfce do? Stick
> > with Gtk2, as remotely likely as it seems right now? Radically change
> > direction and switch to Enlightenment (
> > http://www.enlightenment.org/p.php?p=about/efl ), as Auke once
> > suggested and especially since Enlightenment seems more compatible
> > with the Xfce philosophy than Gtk3 given the direction in which the
> > latter is currently heading?
> >
> > I know that this has already been discussed on the list in the past,
> > but it seems to me that Gtk3 just comes back hunting us. Regards,
> > Liviu
> >
> >
>
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