Team for Debian maintainers 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 GTK project developers have ceased support for GTK2 more than five years ago, and maintaining the abandoned GTK2 in the main repository is becoming problematic. Distributions that have already stopped supplying GTK2 include Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 16, openSUSE 16, and Arch Linux. Debian is suggested to follow their example.
Of the significant projects tied to GTK2, GIMP remained until recently, 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 supports its own fork of GTK2 - YTK.
The most serious issue blocking the removal of GTK2 is that GTK2 is still used in the graphical installer of Debian. The Debian repository also retains around 150 packages related through dependencies to GTK2, and if GTK2 is discontinued, these packages will need to be removed since they are largely unmaintained and porting them to GTK3 is unlikely.
Many of these packages have active users who are not willing to switch to other programs. Furthermore, some developers have advocated for maintaining support for GTK2 in Debian, considering the rationale for its removal to be unfounded. For instance, the mention that GTK3 was released 15 years ago is irrelevant, as GTK3 does not replace GTK2, just as GTK4 does not replace GTK3.
Doubts are also raised regarding arguments such as the lack of HiDPI and Wayland support in GTK2, as these features are not needed, and users are satisfied with the current situation. The comparison with Arch Linux, where GTK2 is excluded from the main repository but available in unofficial ones, is deemed inappropriate. During discussions, a question was also raised about how GTK2 is worse than GCC 3.3, which was included for over 20 years, up to Debian 12, of which 16 years were solely for providing libstdc++5 for outdated executables.
Advocates for removing GTK2 cite the inability to ensure package security as one of the reasons, while opponents argue that security for GTK2 in Debian has not been a concern for many, and the last error marked as a vulnerability dates back to 2015.
För nÀrvarande pÄgÄr diskussioner om hur man kan fortsÀtta stödja applikationer knutna till GTK2 i distributionspaketet. Som ett av alternativen föreslÄs att separera GTK2 och dess knutna applikationer till ett eget oauktoriserat lager. Bland idéerna nÀmns ocksÄ att skapa en wrapper som översÀtter GTK2:s API till GTK3 och att övergÄ till att leverera en fork av GTK2 frÄn projektet Ardour. Det föreslÄs ocksÄ att inte ta bort paketen omedelbart, utan istÀllet sÀtta dem i tillstÄndet "orphaned", i hopp om att nÄgon vill ta över underhÄllet.
Bland populÀra paket knutna till 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
KĂ€lla: opennet.ru
