GTK2 Brought Back From the Dead

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]A fork of GTK2. Yes, the old school GTK2. The GTK2 that the Gnome project is desperate for you to never use again has been forked and is being hosted over at the Devouin Project. And I am psyched for it. I love this. It now it's I want to be very clear. They describe themselves as quote an unofficial community-maintained fork of historical GTK2 end quote. And I just want to say this is such a tremendously good idea.

[00:00:36]Yes, do this please. It is a phenomenally good idea. What this is is essentially it's GTK2 as it existed. The toolkit as it existed back in the Gnome 20 days, the Gnome2 desktop environment days, back when it was fast and lean and light and was really, really well tested. It was a phenomenal phenomenal UI API and system for back then and forking it and maintaining it and making it function nowadays brings some pretty significant benefits. Not the least of which is that now we can continue building and supporting GTK2based software which there is a tremendous amount of just an absolutely huge almost almost absurdly large amount of GTK2 software out there running on X11 such as X Libre and you can now have it running on modern systems and we can support it more effectively on modern systems. No need for whand. None of the GTK3 or GTK4 bloat and problems. We can leave all that off to the side because sometimes, and let's let's be honest here, sometimes older is better, right?

[00:01:59]Just because something is newer does not necessarily mean it is inherently better. And while GTK2 was not a perfect API, it was not. It was real good and it was really well tested and it has a ton of software written for it. So yeah, you know what? In this case, I'm going to say it flat out GTK2 is better than what came after it. So uh what what we what we've got here is now uh GTK2 with minor updates to make it run on modern systems, modern compilers, modern dependencies running on modern systems.

[00:02:38]What that means is we could in theory use this to more effectively fork and run and maintain old versions of Gnome 2 uh GTK2 desktop environments such as Gnome 2 or uh or older XFCE and just keep them running and keep them running on modern systems.

[00:02:59]And there's there's no reason none whatsoever that that can't be absolutely fan freakingastic and just just glorious and and super super fast. Uh there's already people talking about taking uh some of those old systems like Mate and Gnome 2 and XFCE and using them based on this new forked GTK2.

[00:03:24]uh the developer makes a point of saying that this is not affiliated with GTK or with Gnome at all. Right? And that they're searching for the right name. Uh someone someone mentioned maybe we should just call it the good toolkit uh instead of the toolkit. Now it's just the good toolkit for GTK2. Right?

[00:03:45]That seems to be the leading suggestion and I like it. It's fantastic. But at the moment, it's simply called GTK2-NG for, you know, next generation. Uh, let me let me show you a couple little tidbits here. Uh, here's a screenshot of their their source repository that's hosted over at the DevOp project. Um, here's here's the announcement from uh from a developer here. All right. He says, I decided to pause the seamless DevOp project for a moment to fix GTK 2.

[00:04:14]Here is the repo. Uh I added two patches that the uh Arch user repository maintainers apply to GTK2. Uh implemented uh Stefan 111's Q sort and blah blah blah blah blah and fixed all of the compiler warnings uh so you can use it on a modern system. Uh tested with both GCC14 and CIANG 21 and LeafPad. And then here's some future plans uh backport further improvements.

[00:04:44]um uh backport new features from our doors GTK2 fork um uh which again people have had to do a lot of a lot of development tools a lot of a lot of pieces of software that relied on GTK2 have had to fork GTK2 to implement fixes to to bring new features into play uh because that was just way easier more reasonable and practical than migrating an entire massive application suite over to GTK 3 or GTK 4. It just it just made more sense. So, let's backport a lot of those those new features in to one consolidated GTK2 fork. Um getting rid of more errors and bugs, test compiling with GCC 15, uh find another name.

[00:05:34]It's a it's a good future plan. Uh and change the license to GPL3 if possible.

[00:05:38]I don't know that if that's actually possible, but but I like what they're saying there. Uh, and a lot of people are are talking already about um making a a lot of GTK2 software running under this particular fork of GTK2 like and Escape and and all sorts of things.

[00:05:56]Uh, and and I I absolutely love this.

[00:05:59]And here's here's the thing.

[00:06:02]We are in a an interesting moment in the world of Linux and open source desktops.

[00:06:09]We are seeing a period of time when people are reacting and and almost revoling against some of the newer technologies that are being forced upon people uh whand and and many other things Rust and a few others and um and saying well why can't we use what we've always used and just improve it why can't we do that um why why do we need to get rid of some of the platform supports that we've had for years. Why do we need to uh ditch the APIs that have have served us so terribly well for for quite some time? What what's the actual benefit there? And because of that that revoling we have we have an opportunity to have modern systems running a modern hardware modern Linux systems running upto-date versions of GTK2 and the Gnome 2 desktop environment which was the high point of Gnome. I mean Gnome one had its problems. Gnome 2 eventually got just so gosh darn polished. It was a fantastic system. And then Gnome 3 and it was just it's it's been all downhill since then.

[00:07:27]So the idea that we could have Gnome 2, the high point of of Gnome's desktop environment, uh, running on top of X Libre, right, uh, on top of a modern, well-maintained X server, utilizing GTK2 in a modern maintained way. I'm sorry, but this is this is a dream come true.

[00:07:50]This is a phenomenal way to to approach having a great Linux or or various BSD uh system is having the best of the future and the best of the past brought forward to have full support of modern futuristic systems. Right? So, we're not saying, "Oh, we're going to go back and use a a Linux kernel from 15 years ago."

[00:08:16]No, no, no. We're saying we're taking the best of the software from the whole lifespan of Linux 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. The best, bring it forward, update it to be easy to maintain on modern systems and then use the best of the best that we've got from the current days and have it all melded together.

[00:08:40]So we can run every piece of software we want to run, have our systems be lightweight and be welldesigned and well tested. That is a reasonable and and that is the Linux way of doing it. I mean that is the way. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, man. Let's go back and find the good stuff that we had and let's bring it all the way forward. So um I don't know what's going to happen with this project. Let's let's be honest. I mean this this project was just announced by a single developer.

[00:09:10]It's currently being hosted over at the DevOp project but I love it. The idea is phenomenal. So either this inc in incarnation of this idea will be a success or someone else needs to come along and and make something similar or identical to this a success because this is a fantastic idea that will benefit Linux users now and for years to come.

[00:09:38]So kudos to the person uh who who kickstarted this. I hope it takes off.

[00:09:43]Um, I look forward very much to having a nice modern Linux kernel with X Libre on top of it with GTK2 and Gnome 2 and have it all be modern, maintained, patched up and fixed up and and and ready to rock for the future. That's That's awesome. That's awesome. Uh, that's awesome. Thank you to the Lunduke Journal subscribers for allowing me to do this sort of coverage. Uh, thank you to the Lunduke Journal lifetime subscribers, uh, which you can find immortalized on the lifetime subscriber walls of shame up at lunduk.com.

[00:10:28]There's so many of them now. Oh my gosh, there's just so many walls. Uh, and and I've got a few I'm adding to a couple of these walls. They need to be tweaked a little bit here and there. Uh, but if you'd like to be added, there is still space on the Solaris wall. Um, if you, uh, if you have not contacted me and you have a lifetime subscription, you'd like to be added to the Solaris wall, let me know. Uh, if you don't have a lifetime subscription yet, you can grab one. It's all up at luke.com. Monthly, yearly, lifetime subscriptions, free subscriptions, whatever. Just go to lunduk.com and click on a couple of links because it's fantastic. And with that, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, nerds and nerdets across the inner tubes, I do declare and