Xfce 4.12 Planned For March, GTK3 Still Uncertain

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Xfce 4.12 Planned For March, GTK3 Still Uncertain

While most of the Linux desktop talk these days is about Unity, KDE, and GNOME, advancing in a quiet but steadfast manner is Xfce. The next major release of Xfce, version 4.12, is due out in March. It's undecided at this time though whether Xfce 4.12 will use GTK2 or GTK3...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTE4MDE

[elanthis]

Screw them, I already ported over half their core desktop apps to GTK3 over a year ago. It took barely two evenings of coding. The git branches are still available, and they are well aware of them. They're just sticking their heads in the sand, not being cautious engineers.

[bwat47]

Screw them, I already ported over half their core desktop apps to GTK3 over a year ago. It took barely two evenings of coding. The git branches are still available, and they are well aware of them. They're just sticking their heads in the sand, not being cautious engineers.

Yeah, sticking with GTK2 is a bad idea IMO, moving to the current GTK codebase will make things easier in the future, they are digging themselves into a hole if they don't.

[narciso]

I'm using XFCE Xubuntu 12.10 and I love the DE but, they are getting into trouble with panel indicators, because most of them moved to gtk3.

At least they should port the panel to GTK3.

Dev's say that gtk3 is not faster than gk2 and it takes more memory.Is this true, or a lazy excuse?

[squirrl]

I hate GTK3's color-picker.
I can't stand Gnome3's Application Settings panel.

Just an odd curiosity, fonts should scale when you re-size a window below it's mini,um. Or join us next time
when Zombies eat your desktop.

XFCE4 still sane

Gnome is zombie bait.

[bwat47]

I hate GTK3's color-picker.
I can't stand Gnome3's Application Settings panel.

Just an odd curiosity, fonts should scale when you re-size a window below it's mini,um. Or join us next time
when Zombies eat your desktop.

XFCE4 still sane

Gnome is zombie bait.

What does gnome 3's control center have to do with xfce/gtk3? Stop trolling.

[chris2kari]

Yeah, sticking with GTK2 is a bad idea IMO, moving to the current GTK codebase will make things easier in the future, they are digging themselves into a hole if they don't.

I can't find any technical justification for rushing like lemmings to GTK+ 3. Few app's will benefit.
The LTS versions of the most popular distro's will be required to support GTK+ 2 for years to come.

LXDE dev's are not in a hurry : http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp...de.pcmanfm/239
XFCE dev's are not in a hurry : http://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce4...ay/029843.html
Chromium still on GTK+ 2 for a long time : http://code.google.com/p/chromium/is...etail?id=79722

So apart from faddism I'm at a loss to justify this heavy breathing & sweating about porting like crazy to a less mature, less memory efficient toolkit.
Olease explain?

[ncopa]

Dev's say that gtk3 is not faster than gk2 and it takes more memory.Is this true, or a lazy excuse?

It is true. They showed the exact numbers as well. See this thread:
http://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce4...ay/029784.html

[ncopa]

The reason they don't want gtk3 is that it takes significantly more memory and is noticeable slower, which makes it not "fun" to port it. The developers are volunteers, using their spare time for hacking so the "fun" part is their only salary.

If you seriously want gtk3 support for xfce, then you should build the currently ported xfce libs (they are in xfce git), and show that the memory usage have improved in latest gtk3 release or git - or optimize memory usage in gtk3.

You should also give the xfce devs some "proof" that gtk3 will no longer break theming every release in future.

Those two issues fixed in gtk3 and I am sure xfce-4.12 will get support for gtk3.

[ncopa]

Dev's say that gtk3 is not faster than gk2 and it takes more memory.Is this true, or a lazy excuse?

They showed the exact numbers.
http://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce4...ay/029784.html