this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2026
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I much prefer QT. The GTK ethos since Gnome 3 is basically: "We're making this for our own needs, we don't care about what you want"
And while I sympathize and understand the frustrations that downstream brings, I don't think any project not part of Gnome/GIMP should be building on it.
QT is built from the ground up to be used by anyone, regardless of needs or use case. It's a better fit for building complex software like desktop environments.
Well, KDEs Qt fork (I think they have one). Qt is released proprietary and the older versions are open source. Which may make it pretty well funded but also always behind on updates.
Newer GTK (through phosh and gnome-mobile) makes for great mobile applications, but no way I'm using those on the desktop.
Yeah, for my hobbyist needs I was looking at qt myself. They've both been around since 98. But you're right about gtk being focused on their use only. It's in the name. Gimp tool kit. Though these days I guess its more GNOME?
It has really only been a problem since GTK4. A lot of the rest of the GTK universe has stuck with GTK3. Now we are seeing people come up with alternative versions of libadwaita.
We should end up seeing a fork on the GTK side with GNOME going one way and everybody else another.
Tbh custom libadwaitas are kind of how GTK4 is supposed to be used.