GTK 4.2 Releasing Next Month With Likely Introducing A New OpenGL Renderer

While the GTK 4.0 toolkit just released in December, GTK 4.2 is already gearing up for release next month with GNOME 40.

While not merged quite yet, most notable to GTK 4.2 as the first GTK4 update is a new OpenGL renderer. This OpenGL renderer overhaul was driven in improving the macOS support where its OpenGL requirements are more strict than Linux. With GTK 4.0 is also the Vulkan renderer that is available to Linux users. The new renderer code hasn't been merged yet but its noted that it's nearly at feature parity and in turn is likely to still land for GTK 4.2. The old OpenGL renderer will likely co-exist for comparison/testing until the new renderer has proven itself.

GTK 4.2 is also bringing popover shadows as a minor but noticeable UI improvement. GTK 4.2 will also bring input support improvements and those changes being back-ported too for GTK 3.24.

For more information on these latest GTK 4.2 happenings, see the GTK.org blog post for their latest status update.

With GTK 4.2 plus a lot of other changes throughout the desktop, GNOME 40 should be quite an exciting release.