Firefox 59 Is Dropping GTK2 Support

Now that Firefox's GTK3 support is finally into shape, Firefox 59 will be doing away with GTK2 tool-kit support.

The latest Firefox Nightly code ahead of Firefox 59.0 (not the upcoming Firefox 58) will drop GTK2 support. As of this week the GTK2 tool-kit code was removed from Firefox with the GTK3 support proving to be suitable.

Bug 1278282 that was opened two years ago to remove the GTK2 code once the GTK3 support was mature is now resolved. Dropping the GTK2-specific code while keeping in the code relevant to GTK3 support lightened the Firefox codebase by just over one thousand lines of code.

Firefox 59 has also been working on an improved screenshot tool, better security in the wake of Meltdown and Spectre, and other developer improvements. Firefox 58 is due to be released on 23 January while Firefox 59 should arrive on 13 March.