GTK+ started making less sense for serious desktop development when Qt went LGPL in January 2009 and then went on to become highly modular in Qt5.

The only 'advantage' GTK+ really has over Qt is that it's pure C, so there a lot more bindings for all the languages you're probably not going to use to write significant desktop software anyway.

I cannot agree more. GTK+ still exists because that's one of the few pure-C toolkits left around.

Qt, wx* and Fltk (which are arguably the other most popular widgets in order of popularity) are all C++. Not to mention that wxWindows on linux actually uses GTK+ for rendering, and it uses a terrible event table mechanism.

Don't you need to sign a CLA agreetment to contribute to Qt?

This isn't really leaving GTK+ because of GTK+, this is recognising that using three different toolkits for different OSs is hard. ChromeOS would also be a huge reason.

GTK+ looked old in 2003. Hasn't gotten better (Stares at XFCE).

What? I think it looks better than ever http://i.imgur.com/PJdqYfT.png

Until they break your theme in the next minor release.

duude - what theme is that ? and what CSS skin for HN are you using ?

I don't know about the gtk theme. Possibly part of the ElementaryOS project?

The HN skin is actually a Chrome extension called Hacker News Extension Suite.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-enhanc...

Yep, both of you are correct HNES: https://github.com/etcet/HNES

Pretty much vanilla Elementary OS theme with Source Sans pro front.

Hacker News Enhancement Suite chrome plugin. I've been using it for a few months, and it does a ton of handy little things.

Given that new UIs tend to look like crap, I consider that a feature. The only problem is that it doesn't look old enough.

Weird isn't it? First, everyone wanted it to look flat. Then Win3.11 had mild bevels. Then Win95 had more bevels and 3d look panels (sometimes recessed, which just involves drawing the two lines the other side of the panel...). And then things went really squidgy-looking with GNOME, and then it has gone flat again.

I am not sure what people want. At least buttons look like buttons (unlike the way iOS and other mobiles OSes are going). Is it a button? Is it a plane? No, it's text! You end up bashing your screen as it isn't obvious what to press. My mum is really confused.

You can change many aspects of the look of GTK+ with themes. You can probably even make it look nice and flat, in keeping with the latest UI fads.

Personally, I think XFCE looks nice out of the box (in Xubuntu, at least). And what's a better alternative? Unity and GNOME are both way too dumbed down for me, and KDE is both ugly (IMHO) and and quite buggy.

Fully agree. I did some contributions to gtkmm around 2000, while seeing watching the typical C++ hatred from GTK+ C folks.

Did write an article about Gtkmm for DDJ as part of it.

Eventually it stop making sense to me.

(sameless plug): MoonLion theme for elementaryOS https://github.com/vivaserver/MoonLion

As someone who has only recently jumped into linux desktop development, what's the alternative? I mean, elementary have a nice fork but it's still GTK (albeit wrapped in Vala which takes the pain away), and don't get me started on KDE.

Qt/GTK+/FLTK, depending on the language or footprint. Of those, Qt/FLTK offer very easy multi-platform development.

GTK+ was always incredibly poor in anything but linux, and with GTK3 the footprint/performance is worse than Qt.

wxWindows has a very ugly event table/dispatch mechanism, which somewhat reminds me of the old win32 api. On linux it even uses GTK+ for rendering. It used to make sense before Qt4 came, but nowdays I wouldn't use it.

You can develop Qt apps without any dependency on KDE.

FLTK or wxWidgets. wxWidgets on Linux is actually wxGTK though, but it's pretty painless. Or you could use Qt, which doesn't really look native on other platforms.

And another one: Xlib

hahaha lol