The Debian team responsible for GNOME packages plans not to include the GTK2 toolkit in the upcoming Debian 14 distribution, expected to be released in the summer of 2027. The developers of the GTK project stopped supporting GTK2 over five years ago, and maintaining the abandoned GTK2 in the main repository has become problematic. Notable distributions that have already stopped delivering GTK2 include Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 16, openSUSE 16, and Arch Linux. Debian is advised to follow their example.
Among significant projects that relied on GTK2 until recently was GIMP, but starting from GIMP 3.0, this graphic editor has been ported to GTK3. GTK is also used in the popular audio editor Ardour, but this project does not depend on external libraries and maintains its own fork of GTK2 — YTK.
The most serious problem blocking the removal of GTK2 is that GTK2 is still used in the graphical installer of Debian. There are about 150 packages in the Debian repository that have dependencies on GTK2, and if GTK2 is discontinued, these packages will have to be removed, as they are largely unmaintained and their porting to GTK3 is unlikely.
Many of these packages have active users who are not willing to switch to other programs. There are also developers advocating for the continued support of GTK2 in Debian and considering the reasons for its removal to be unfounded. For example, the mention that GTK3 was released 15 years ago is meaningless since GTK3 does not replace GTK2, just as GTK4 does not replace GTK3.
Arguments questioning such claims, like the lack of HiDPI and Wayland support in GTK2, are noted as irrelevant since they are not needed, and users are satisfied. Comparing with Arch Linux, where GTK2 is excluded from the main repository but available unofficially, is also deemed inappropriate. During the discussion, a question was raised about how GTK2 is worse than GCC 3.3, which was provided for over 20 years, up until Debian 12, out of which 16 years were solely for offering libstdc++5 for outdated executables.
Supporters of the removal of GTK2 cite the inability to ensure the security of the package as one reason, while opponents argue that the security of GTK2 in Debian has not concerned many, and the last error marked as a vulnerability dates back to 2015.
Currently, there is a discussion about ways to maintain support for applications that rely on GTK2 within the distribution. One of the options proposed is to move GTK2 and the applications dependent on it to a separate unofficial repository. Among the ideas mentioned is the creation of a wrapper that translates the GTK2 API to GTK3, as well as switching to supplying a fork of GTK2 from the Ardour project. It has also been suggested not to immediately remove the packages, but to change their status to 'orphaned', in hopes that someone will be willing to continue their maintenance.
Among the popular packages dependent on GTK2:
- afterstep
- amsynth
- doublecmd (Double Commander)
- fpc
- geg
- gkrellm
- gmpc
- gnome-paint
- gkrellm
- grpn
- hexchat
- ibus
- lazarus
- mplayer
- navit
- openjdk-8
- pidgin
- rlvm
- sane-frontends
- sawfish
- scim
- seqtools
- soundmodem
- sylpheed
- tenace
- tickr
- tilem
- uim
- usermode
- xlog
- xournal
- xsane
- xzgv
- z88
Source: opennet.ru
