Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 Is Eliminating GTK 2 Support

While we are about three years out from seeing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, it was announced today that the GTK2 toolkit will not be supported in that next major RHEL version.

While the GTK2 toolkit was long-used by Linux applications, GTK3 has already been out for over a decade and GTK4 has been out for two years... Keep in mind RHEL10 will be out as stable in likely 2025. Most prominent Linux software has already been ported from GTK2 to GTK3 or GTK4, but there are rare exceptions -- The GIMP and its long-brewing GIMP 3.0 release will finally abandon GTK2.

So most users won't be impacted by RHEL 10 dropping GTK2 support and hopefully GIMP 3.0 happens within the next three years and the few other lingering programs still using GTK2. This will though be most problematic for any in-house programs at organizations that are still running in production and have relied on GTK2 for years and never ported to GTK3. Those software engineering teams at organizations better think of porting to a newer toolkit or plan to stick to existing enterprise Linux distributions until the end of their lifecycle.

It's been a while since GTK 2 was widely used on the RHEL desktop...

With Red Hat planning to see GTK2's dismissal from RHEL10, other enterprise Linux distribution vendors will also likely take a similar route for those that haven't already.

Today's announcement sums up GTK2's removal in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 as:

The toolkit served us gratefully, but it starts to show its age with regards to modern technologies such as Wayland, HiDPI screens, HDR and others.