The developers of the GTK library have announced that the backend for the X11 protocol will be marked as deprecated and that support for X11 will be discontinued in the GTK 5 branch. Despite its deprecated status, work on X11 systems will be maintained in the GTK 4 branch.
The desire to eliminate the X11 backend is explained by the cessation of activity in the development of the X11 protocol and issues with maintenance — the backend is supported on a residual basis, as the existing GTK and GNOME developers are focused on Wayland. Due to stagnation in the backend's development, it hinders the implementation of new features in GTK. In 2022, an attempt was made to find individuals interested in maintaining the X11 protocol in GTK and willing to take on the backend's support, but none were found.
In addition to X11, the Broadway backend, which allows rendering GTK library output in a web browser window, and the GtkShortcutsWindow class, which displays hints for keyboard shortcuts and touch gestures, have also been declared deprecated. A replacement for GtkShortcutsWindow is planned to be proposed, which will be included in the significant fall release of libadwaita.
Additionally, it is worth mentioning the release of GTK 4.17.4 in the testing branch 4.17, which is developing functionality for the future stable branch 4.18. GTK 4.17.4 includes an experimental backend that allows GTK applications to run on smartphones with the Android platform. An apk package with a demonstration mobile application has been prepared to showcase GTK's capabilities on Android devices.
The rendering engine 'gl', which uses OpenGL, has been removed from GTK 4.17.4. Starting with GTK 4.14, a new engine called 'ngl' has been included, which implements an abstraction layer for OpenGL, working over Vulkan. One limitation of the 'ngl' engine is the cessation of support for systems with outdated drivers and hardware.
Source: opennet.ru
