Firefox 59 Is Dropping GTK2 Support

[cybertraveler]

yes, a serious system library cannot broke backwards compatibility at every release.
if GTK+3.22 will receive no more updates, then when they stop to broke compatibility they stop to provide support and bugfix too? it seems unfair to me.

They reported that they will continue to patch 3.22 (IE they will bump the third number in the version). Their patches will fix security issues and bugs, but they wont brake backwards compatibility. So providing this isn't all an elaborate ruse from the GTK+ team, you can write a program that targets GTK+ 3.22 and be sure that it will work for years to come without requiring fixes just to stay compatible with new GTK+ 3 releases.

Just to clarify: the same will apply to GTK+ 4.0 when it's released. You can write a program to target GTK+ 4.0 and it will work even if the users of your program have GTK+ 4.1 or 4.2 or even 4.45 installed on their systems.

I very much hope the GTK devs will keep their promise on this.

[Creak]

As LXDE user (gtk2) I will not upgrade to a gtk3 version of firefox, probably when I will upgrade to LXQT I will switch to the qupzilla browser.

LXDE is clearly not important enough for GNOME devs to support 3 APIs of GTK!! It makes no sense.
I think GTK 2 has been supported for long enough, and I think it's the LXDE devs that should upgrade their project.
And no one is forcing you to stay on any DE, please please please use LXQT, see how it looks. If it fits your desires, then good for you, go crazy! If not, maybe you need to think about your life choices that made you chose LXDE in the first place, knowing that it was using a very old tech that will, obviously, be unsupported sooner than later.

[grok]

You're overreacting! [unrelated : my post was not very subtle either]
He's not demanding eternal support of gtk2, which lxde relies on, but plans to drop lxde and also firefox. Firefox using the soon "old" GTK3 is a complete non issue though, since there's the maintenance schedule already described and years from now the browser will likely migrate again.

Plus, firefox only uses gtk for a few details. For almost twenty years it has looked the same under linux Unix and Windows despite never using gtk under the latter.

Then, a few megabytes of RAM and disk used due to having both Qt5 and GTK3 software running is inconsequential and would likely happen anyway.

Some context : LXDE stays under gtk2. The main dev rejected gtk3 back then (no need to flame again. perhaps migrating to gtk 3.22 or 4.0 will be more attractive for gtk2 software). But LXDE does have a big toolkit upgrade/rewrite, it's LXQt
LXQt is buggier, less finished though. Both are actively developed

[grok]

Personally I suspect I will use X11, unaccelerated, compositor optional desktops for a while. Unless you send me an RX550 or 8 gigs ddr4 and an APU in the mail

Say, things like Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and Mint 19 are quite a while into the future! I expect gtk2 will still work the same, likely lxde too. I dunno about Debi)an 10. And yes with 32bit i686 available.

[nomadewolf]

What is going to happen to people using RHEL/CentOS 6.x on desktop?

Maybe they could switch to an actual desktop distro...

[kpedersen]

Maybe they could switch to an actual desktop distro...

RHEL is a group of (admittedly very similar) distros. Including RedHat Enterprise Linux Desktop. The "Desktop" in the name should suggest that it is infact an "actual desktop distro".

https://www.redhat.com/en/store/red-...?sku=RH0844913

Interestingly, due to RH's extended support, I predict that RHEL6 will be able to run the very latest and future versions of firefox for much longer than any other current distro such as Debian 9, ArchLinux 2018, Fedora 27, etc...

So... I think we are safe (and as a bonus, get to use Gnome 2 until Gnome 3 gets replaced with something "correct")

[nomadewolf]

RHEL is a group of (admittedly very similar) distros. Including RedHat Enterprise Linux Desktop. The "Desktop" in the name should suggest that it is infact an "actual desktop distro".

https://www.redhat.com/en/store/red-...?sku=RH0844913

Interestingly, due to RH's extended support, I predict that RHEL6 will be able to run the very latest and future versions of firefox for much longer than any other current distro such as Debian 9, ArchLinux 2018, Fedora 27, etc...

So... I think we are safe (and as a bonus, get to use Gnome 2 until Gnome 3 gets replaced with something "correct")

Well, well, well...
I guess you're right!
I really thought RHEL was only for servers. Don't where i got that idea from...