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GTK vs Qt Criticism

The cluster focuses on criticisms of the GTK GUI toolkit, including its feature gaps, cross-platform issues, and ties to GNOME, with many users advocating for Qt or other alternatives like wxWidgets, alongside discussions of GTK4 improvements.

📉 Falling 0.3x Open Source
3,954
Comments
20
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#3912
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

2007
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2011
53
2012
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2014
104
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Top Contributors

pjmlp (61) badsectoracula (53) smoldesu (52) superkuh (50) audidude (31)

Keywords

QT GL AppImage SUSE IDE UI GPU GTK4 OO C89 gtk qt gnome wayland inkscape windows win32 apps xfce glib

Sample Comments

Lanz • Dec 5, 2018 • View on HN

I see complaining about GTK on your first link - have you heard of Qt?

digi_owl • Jun 29, 2015 • View on HN

Just wish Gnome would lighten up on their GTK chokehold.

beamatronic • Feb 13, 2019 • View on HN

Isn’t Gnome/GTK supposed to be kind of close?

pjmlp • Apr 12, 2022 • View on HN

Yes, Gtk is a joke in feature parity.

jhoechtl • Nov 15, 2016 • View on HN

Serious comment:why bother with gtk anyhow and move to Qt?

eperoumal • Jul 19, 2011 • View on HN

Wow GTK. People are still using that ?

stcredzero • Sep 25, 2008 • View on HN

You'd probably be better off with wxWidgets or Qt than GTK.

morshu9001 • Dec 10, 2025 • View on HN

but then GTK has issues with some DEs supposedly

timw4mail • Oct 5, 2023 • View on HN

Funny how this only seems to be an issue with GTK apps, and not with QT.

jhoechtl • Sep 22, 2020 • View on HN

I rhink its actually gtk which developers think is doing it right?