WingNews

kvemkon|4 days ago

This has been reported here but got not enough attention:

"Debian GNOME team announces intent to remove GTK 2 in Debian 14" (08.01.2026)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46548257

P.S. Still hope GNOME maintainers let other volunteers maintain GTK 2.

rlpb|2 days ago

> P.S. Still hope GNOME maintainers let other volunteers maintain GTK 2.

They already said this is fine: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2026/01/msg00146.html

pamcake|4 days ago

Well that's a bummer. There's a whole generation of barely-if-at-all-maintained but still perfectly working utils that will probably be forever lost to obscurity with that.

Recently I wish Debian was more Debian.

stonogo|4 days ago

With the possible exception of Hexchat, I'd wager any such tools were already lost to obscurity.

curt15|4 days ago

Does gtk2 still have Debian maintainers? Whatever is in Debian's official repository is effectively endorsed by Debian. If they don't have enough capacity it's wiser to drop support than to sign off on something of unknown quality.

dmz73|3 days ago

I hate losing access to software just because it is "unmaintained". If module is "endorsed" now, since it is included in current version, and there is no maintenance, so no changes made to it, why is it suddenly not good enough to "endorse" in the future? No, security issues do not count as they don't magically appear, either they are in there now and debian is fine with distributing "insecure" code or they don't matter. Debian is fine with shipping broken version of software for years as long as they consider it "stable" so why drop working "stable" software just because no one is making changes to it?

canistel|4 days ago

- GTK2 is only one of the supported widget sets for Lazarus. It supports Qt5 & 6 too. I feel Lazarus should switch to Qt5 or 6 until GTK3 is mature.

- Hexchat IRC client is another popular application that is still stuck with GTK2.

presbyterian|4 days ago

Considering we're on GTK 4, I think GTK 3 is as mature as it's gonna get.

account42|4 days ago

It seems no distro is safe from deletionists.

rlpb|2 days ago

The maintainer driving this in Debian explicitly said:

> That being said I would not object if someone wants to take over the maintenance of GTK2, though I believe keeping it for beyond duke is beating a dead horse.

Source: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2026/01/msg00146.html

Modified3019|2 days ago

If you really need things others are no longer willing to maintain, then it’s time to learn how to help yourself.

The Nix or Guix package managers are likely your easiest bet. See

https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Lazarus

https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/developmen...

kjs3|4 days ago

You can step up and be the maintainer of GTK2 (or anything else that would keep the 'deletionists' at bay) any time you want. Go on...I'm sure you have unlimited time and resources like all the other Debian maintainers.

hulitu|2 days ago

I'm sure they can be easily ported to GTK3, GTK4 and then GTK5 /s

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