I’m not the most knowledgeable on this subject, but I’m curious to learn more.
Why do various toolkits have major releases that seem to reset the features of the last one?
GTK 3 seems like GTK 2 but slower to me, and before the transition was even complete GTK 4 showed up, which just seems like GTK 3 but a bit different. Qt 5 works really well and is efficient on resources, so why are we switching to Qt 6? It seems like reinventing the desktop over and over again.
I understand updates for the kernel for compatibility, small to medium updates to all software for bug fixes and new features, and major updates to toolkits when there are big problems with the current release (X vs Wayland for example). Or if the current release was unreliable and bloated, which I heard was what happened with Qt 4 and why they switched to 5. But I also heard Qt 3 was really stable and lightweight, so why did they switch away from it?
Usually there’s big new features that accomodate more modern hardware better. As an example, Qt6 revamps support for Wayland, HDR, and scaling. Even these things on their own don’t seem like much, but if you go back to KDE 5 in 10 years time you’ll definitely feel like something is plain/dated (or completely not working if you’re on new hardware)
Gtk 3->4 made a lot of internal changes, and at least some were related to making wayland work.
Wayland “worked” in gtk3, however it was very much an afterthought, and half the toolkit was useless under wayland.
Other changes are usually required for changes related to rendering, gtk4 had vulcan rendering which may require some breaking changes.
Another thing is just general breaking changes that are good, sometimes you realise some decision was bad, and a new major release is just a way to make these.
From the end users perspective nothing much changes, it maybe looks a bit different, but not much besides that. But a vulcan renderer and being fully wayland compatible are major improvements that also improve the user experience, even if you don’t notice directly.
I’m not the most knowledgeable on this subject, but I’m curious to learn more.
Why do various toolkits have major releases that seem to reset the features of the last one?
GTK 3 seems like GTK 2 but slower to me, and before the transition was even complete GTK 4 showed up, which just seems like GTK 3 but a bit different. Qt 5 works really well and is efficient on resources, so why are we switching to Qt 6? It seems like reinventing the desktop over and over again.
I understand updates for the kernel for compatibility, small to medium updates to all software for bug fixes and new features, and major updates to toolkits when there are big problems with the current release (X vs Wayland for example). Or if the current release was unreliable and bloated, which I heard was what happened with Qt 4 and why they switched to 5. But I also heard Qt 3 was really stable and lightweight, so why did they switch away from it?
Usually there’s big new features that accomodate more modern hardware better. As an example, Qt6 revamps support for Wayland, HDR, and scaling. Even these things on their own don’t seem like much, but if you go back to KDE 5 in 10 years time you’ll definitely feel like something is plain/dated (or completely not working if you’re on new hardware)
Thank you for the explanation! What specifically does Qt 6 do that Qt 5 can’t do?
Gtk 3->4 made a lot of internal changes, and at least some were related to making wayland work. Wayland “worked” in gtk3, however it was very much an afterthought, and half the toolkit was useless under wayland. Other changes are usually required for changes related to rendering, gtk4 had vulcan rendering which may require some breaking changes. Another thing is just general breaking changes that are good, sometimes you realise some decision was bad, and a new major release is just a way to make these.
From the end users perspective nothing much changes, it maybe looks a bit different, but not much besides that. But a vulcan renderer and being fully wayland compatible are major improvements that also improve the user experience, even if you don’t notice directly.
Interesting. I’m guessing the changes were too big to just be added incrementally in updates to GTK 3?