Switching to GTK2 from GTK3 on Post-Beowulf Devuan Releases

brocashelm · 2025-02-27 20:47:59

Note that this is only intended for experienced users. Do not attempt otherwise.

Unhappy with the direction Xfce has been going since the 4.16 release (CSD and all), I've considered just going back to 4.12 (while staying on Daedalus), which I successfully pulled off by preferring Beowulf's repository for all my Xfce-related packages. The problem, however, is that some of them depend on GTK3 (as 4.12 has partial GTK3 support). What I then did was enable the archived repositories for Ascii and even Jessie, and I ensured that my Xfce would be completely unaffected if I decided to run sudo apt autoremove libgtk-3-0.

Another issue is that I had to use the Jessie versions of xfce4-terminal and xfce4-notifyd, as those were already depending on GTK3 as of Ascii. After successfully "downgrading" my packages accordingly, and seeing that Xfce has been purely GTK2-ized once more, I set a negative pinning on the packages to prevent them from being "upgraded". I only had to redo my Thunar configs (although I'm much happier just using SpaceFM as my file manager, even as a transparent overlay on my icon-less Xfce desktop) and set a script for my panel's CPU temperatures (with xfce4-genmon-plugin).

Going even further, I was able to get the GTK2 versions of GParted, GSmartControl, Meld, Gnumeric, Atril, Engrampa, FileZilla, Audacity, EasyTAG, Geany (although I mainly just use Leafpad), and AbiWord back, but some of those had to be done rather "dirtily" to get the results I sought (i.e. by enabling the archived repositories for Debian's Lenny, Squeeze, and Wheezy releases). It wasn't something I wanted to do, but I was able to resolve all dependencies rather carefully.

Maybe it's "Frankensteined" in a way, but I find the system just as functional as before (if not more so now), and I seldomly tinker with software nowadays. I simply wanted to get rid of GTK3 and its problems. Now, some programs I couldn't actually do that, namely with Firefox ESR, LibreWolf, Thunderbird (although I guess Sylpheed remains an option), Alacarte (because I like customizing my menus, and KDE's menu editor flat-out sucks), and Synaptic (which I keep around in case I don't feel like typing up command lines). I couldn't get the GTK2 version of NetworkManager's applet to install, so I'm using the Qt5 alternative in nm-tray.

Has anyone else tried this? I'd be curious as to a different solution from mine.

greenjeans · 2025-02-28 18:07:12

For me, I still have fully functional ISO's of pure Jessie that are all GTK2, archive repo is still available but I have everything I want already, the only program that needed a modern version to work properly was the browser, so I use an appimage of FF. No frankensteining needed.

s1mple · 2025-03-02 12:27:33

That's pretty cool.

brocashelm · 2025-06-12 21:02:37

For a worthy RSS feed reader, I recommend using the last GTK2 version of Liferea, which is 1.8.7, but the last one Debian packaged is 1.8.6. The dependencies should be resolvable if using the standalone DEB from sometime in 2012 (the current Debian stable release at that time was Squeeze, but Wheezy was a year away from the testing freeze).

Anyway, Liferea is great, and it has some cool features, like managing different categories for your feeds, opening an item within the program (in a new tab, as if it were a browser), minimizing to a tray icon with notifications and total new feeds, and setting up proxy connections and what to use to download file enclosures (e.g. Mpv for videos, Leafpad for text files). It's a great tool that's still useful to this day.

Thanks to Liferea's exceeding pros, I no longer have a use for Newsboat, which was already freezing up at random and has Rust stains in its code...

stargate-sg1-cheyenne-mtn · 2025-06-13 05:36:06

referencing RSS Feed Readers, please go to https://rachelbythebay.com/w/ and do a page search for "feed reader" since she has done a fairly exhaustive review over the course of 22 commentaries.

brocashelm · 2025-06-16 06:16:10

Do the happy dance! I finally got rid of Thunderbird as my e-mail client, thanks to the versatility of Claws Mail (last GTK2 version being 3.17.8). Much like SpaceFM, it's very customizable, and you get a lot of handy plugins for security and encryption. I recommend this guide to hardening your Claws Mail profile(s). Claws Mail's official wiki can also be a good resource on setting things up. Surprisingly, the ArchWiki does not have a page on Claws Mail (they usually do).

brocashelm · 2025-06-26 05:55:29

Interestingly, Ardour (a DAW similar to Audacity, but far more advanced with customization features) will remain GTK2-only software (thus no Wayland support) for the foreseeable future. See this post in a Phoronix thread where the original poster cries about it "still" being on GTK2. This one is the most important, which I shall quote below:

From a project-level perspective, perhaps the most important change is that we have moved the source code of our GUI toolkit (GTK v2) into the Ardour source tree. This has no impact whatsoever on people using the builds provided at ardour.org 2.
However, this version of GTK is about to be deprecated by a number of Linux distributions, and without this change it will become more difficult for both individual users and Linux package maintainers to continue building Ardour. This also leaves us free to (slowly) strip down aspects of the toolkit that we do not use, and potentially modify it as needed in the future. It also means that even the distribution builds of Ardour for Linux will contain our patches to GTK, which has historically not been the case.
Q: "Does this mean native Wayland support will come in the future?"
A: No plans for Wayland support. Doing the work will get our users nothing, more or less.
Q: "No plans to update to a newer GTK version?"
A: "No plans to ever move to a newer version of GTK. That work will get our users very little, and so the cost/benefit analysis says “nope”."

JWM-Kit · 2025-06-26 13:07:43

Nice work. I don't know if it's worth all the effort, but it is pretty cool.

Thanks for the info about Ardour. Ardour is a must for a FOSS studio environment. Migrating to another solution is not a simple chore, and would most likely require non-free software to achieve the same feature set. Aurdour, KiCad, and I'm sure there are others are great examples of why X11 (or Xlibre) are still necessarily. Not to mention all the apps that work under Wayland but are crippled. I'm not bashing Wayland here. I'm just pointing out the obvious truth that so many wish to intentionally ignore.

I guess studio focused distros will have to ship with X11 (Xlibre) if they are serious.

Harrison MixBus a fork of Aurdour. So I assume it also does not support Wayland

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#1 2025-02-27 20:47:59

Switching to GTK2 from GTK3 on Post-Beowulf Devuan Releases

#2 2025-02-28 18:07:12

Re: Switching to GTK2 from GTK3 on Post-Beowulf Devuan Releases

#3 2025-03-02 12:27:33

Re: Switching to GTK2 from GTK3 on Post-Beowulf Devuan Releases

#4 2025-06-12 21:02:37

Re: Switching to GTK2 from GTK3 on Post-Beowulf Devuan Releases

#5 2025-06-13 05:36:06

Re: Switching to GTK2 from GTK3 on Post-Beowulf Devuan Releases

#6 2025-06-16 06:16:10

Re: Switching to GTK2 from GTK3 on Post-Beowulf Devuan Releases

#7 2025-06-26 05:55:29

Re: Switching to GTK2 from GTK3 on Post-Beowulf Devuan Releases

#8 2025-06-26 13:07:43

Re: Switching to GTK2 from GTK3 on Post-Beowulf Devuan Releases

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