Ubuntu Hoping To Remove Qt 5 Before Ubuntu 26.04 LTS

[Siuoq]

That's the entire point! They added new toolkits while keeping the old around for compatibility.

Linux userland is so broken, its users can't even imagine that there are people that want to be able to run software older than ~2 years.

[Ladis]

Linux userland is so broken, its users can't even imagine that there are people that want to be able to run software older than ~2 years.

Even having the software's source code won't help you (unless you are a programmer and able to rewrite parts).

[kpedersen]

gdi32 is still in Windows. 30 years old library.

And this is why Linux userland is a joke.

Agreed. Whats the point of a GUI (or any) library if it will only survive a few years? The fact Qt is also non-standard C++ and relies on MOC preprocessing means that I would also need to maintain the tooling too once the distro drops it upstream. Maintaining tooling like that becomes very time consuming. Not worth it.

For GUI, I tend to instead use FLTK. Looks quite "old" these days but ultimately is going to outlive most toolkits around today because it is *simple*.

(I actually wrote the upstream Fl_Flex for FLTK because I prefer table-like layouts but don't trust the lifespan of basically any other open-source toolkit these days).

[Surge]

Wonder if AI can be used to convert Qt5 to Qt6 code in a more or less automated manner... recent models are pretty spectacular in some languages. Don't know if they know enough Qt5 vs Qt6 difference.

[You-]

gdi32 is still in Windows. 30 years old library.

And this is why Linux userland is a joke.

It doesnt mean the apps designed for 30 years ago on Windows still work on Windows 11 though.

I had to keep old Windows machines around at work for legacy windows software that would not work on 64 bit Windows. Funnily enough, I recently tried to use it on linux using Bottles and it worked flawlessly.

(The next step of using it on modern Windows using bottles on WSL didnt work as there is no Windows integration with the file chooser portal.)

[anda_skoa]

The fact Qt is also non-standard C++ and relies on MOC preprocessing

That is a common misconception.

MOC does not preprocess code before it gets handed over to the C++ compiler, both header and source files are directly consumed in unaltered form.

MOC is a code generator which creates standard C++ code as its output.
Code generators are widely used in software projects for things like repetitive code, turning formal API or format descriptions into code, etc.

The confusion in the case of MOC is usually caused by its usage of header files as its input.
The same header will be consumed by both MOC and the C++ compiler independently, often in parallel.

Fun fact: if you use Qt with Rust then the its compiler has enough built-in code generation capability to not require a helper.

[Monsterovich]

Ubuntu is now like macOS. Use new APIs or die. We don't want unmaintained software.

Fixed. No need to thank me.

[Monsterovich]

I only have OBS out of all Qt 6 apps installed, the developers at Canonical are just freaking naive.

[the-burrito-triangle]

Linux userland is so broken, its users can't even imagine that there are people that want to be able to run software older than ~2 years.

I won't disagree, since this is true. BUT! You can always use Distrobox or Toolbx to run older apps on a supported distro (i.e., old Fedora/Ubuntu--or whatever). So really, the whole gdi32.dll argument and your own is kind of moot when one can easily (literally a few seconds via the terminal) download and run old apps from 10+ years ago without any issue. Now, if you want a GUI that holds your hand and automagically makes everything work... then Linux is simply not the OS for you.

[the-burrito-triangle]

Can you tell me why Ubuntu has CUPS pre-installed? Maybe there is something important behind it? I only see a vulnerability in this.

So people can print? Why else would it be included? Most people want to be able to do everything out-of-the-box: Watch any "first time" Linux user cry when they can't print something after installing a random distro. Personally, I use CUPS for networked printing and use parts of sane for networked scanning. I gut most of the "junk" that is not needed though (using rpm -ev --nodeps <worthless_bloat_package_name>) and extract RPMs like hplib to get the one or two files I actually need to print. Otherwise I'm installing massive amount of "dependencies" that I don't need for a networked Brother MFC emulating HPs PCL protocol. I even had to write myown .ppd since Brother doesn't provide one. Most people don't want to do that though, and so we install everything and more so people are happy it "just works".