GTK4 released

Can’t we just fork gtk 3? Let gtk 4 rewrite all the apps it wishes to use.

I wish they would ENABLE their ideas, rather than imposing them. Unfortunately their position means the flexibility and choice we enjoy will be curtailed - even in XFCE. CSD is misguided (especially for lasptops) - toolbars should be left to the developer and/or user to decide. Sometimes they are the best choice, sometimes not. I wonder what will happen to Libre Office without toolbars? :grin:

If they wanted to innovate, perhaps putting the ‘header bar’ down the side (left or right, depending on user) would leave the functionality without the vertical size impact - better than jamming everything in the header like CSD does…

Of course, I’m an old stick-in-the-mud who wants to keep the look and workflow I’ve become used to - so take with appropriate salt…

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this is the thing tho; in theory CSD does NOT mean the big bulky bars of Gnome, technically it means the opposite, like how Windows Apps can just look however the fudge they want.

BUT with the combination of GTK4 it invalidates this theory because you HAVE to use the big bulky Gnome headers to fit anything in. And I am frankly worried about more complex apps in general like GIMP and others that rely heavily on menus etc.

Edit: This also includes things like all confirmation buttons in the headerbar “preferably”, so it literally will be impossible to use GTK4 based apps in Qt DEs. The other way around probably works, tho.
This will, I feel, once and for all draw a sharp line between Qt and GTK; it will basically divide Linux in half, like a Mac vs Windows situation. "Oh your favorite text editor is a GTK app? Sorry, no Plasma for you.

Edit again: Another thing… this rant suddenly explained to me why Fedora’s installer sucks:
It uses the Gnome paradigm of confirmation buttons in the header bar, and that is completely unintuitive. Regardless if we as a culture read left to right, right to left, or left-to-bottom (columns instead of rows) your eyes END at the bottom of the page. So that’s why you sign documents there, and that’s why it is intuitive to have your “OK” and “Cancel” buttons at the bottom of the window.

So, with GTK4, can GTK4 apps look as sexy as KDE apps with things like transparent windows with blur?

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Priorities :metal:

From everything I have seen so far - they will be doing well if they can look usable - let alone beautiful!

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I’m waiting for 4.16 for over 2 months now watching how they keep pushing the release. I’m anxious because of all the CSD talk i’ve read these last months.
I just want to see how it feels. I’m ready to go Cinnamon in a beat if it royally sucks. Or Mate. Can’t remember which one had the “per monitor dpi setting” right now.

One other thought: XFCE (4.14) is extremely well balanced IMO. I expect a lot of people feel the same and a new fork to spawn in a short while if the devs go crazy.

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Mate I think has it. Per monitor

CSD? :thinking:

Client-side decoration

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oh yea, i was asking IF Mate has CSD. I like Mate.

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The red marked decorations are CSD, the other one is regular GTK (no idea how non CSD is called).
sc-201218-005841

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Only Gnome has CSD a lot so far (new XFCE seems to have it in settings). I think of it as cramming the menu into the title bar, and ‘three-dot’ access to the rest. If they are removing toolbars too, then it will mean extra clicks to get your choice selected (see pic above for ‘normal’ toolbar and menu)

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No, Mate was the answer to my question regarding which one of Cinnamon and Mate has the DPI per monitor setting.

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Actually, I think Cinnamon has the best monitor and dpi handling…

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Hmm maybe it’s worth looking into for XFCE. Thanks for the tip.

You can already its all down to theme makers gtk3 note no thick headers, and transparency
image

I feel exactly the same.
I had KDE installed a few times in the past but after a couple of days it has to go.

Mainly because of the ugly font it uses.

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Is gtk3-mushrooms still being actively developed since Tomasz moved on? Is gtk3-classic still built from his legacy code base?

Hopefully there will be a gtk4-mushrooms and/or gtk4-nocsd project to completely disable gtk client side decorations in DEs like Plasma / XFCE / Mate.

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No. :frowning:

Yes, but bits break over time as the upstream code changes.

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