qt vs gtk - who is the winner

Arkane · 2008-05-13 13:22:08

SpookyET wrote:

You can make GTK apps use KDE widgets under KDE. You can't do that in reverse though. Look up GTK-QT.

I'm actually surprised there isn't a qt-gtk-engine out there. Or is there?

stojic · 2008-05-13 14:14:47

Actually, you can use QT under GPL freely for commercial applications, if you license them under something GPL-compatible. Only for proprietary apps you must use QT under their commercial license. On the other hand, GTK is licensed under LGPL so it can be linked to proprietary apps freely.

turska · 2008-05-13 14:30:13

stojic wrote:

Actually, you can use QT under GPL freely for commercial applications, if you license them under something GPL-compatible. Only for proprietary apps you must use QT under their commercial license. On the other hand, GTK is licensed under LGPL so it can be linked to proprietary apps freely.

If I'm not mistaken, a commercial Qt license is needed to use anything else than the GPL.

GGLucas · 2008-05-13 16:02:03

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Last edited by GGLucas (2022-06-24 09:06:44)

GogglesGuy · 2008-05-13 17:18:07

Definitely the winner would be fox (fox-toolkit.org). Second place Qt, then GTK (gnome). Try opening /usr/bin in the GTK filedialog... you can go to lunch while it's listing the files...

Last edited by GogglesGuy (2008-05-13 17:18:20)

Susu · 2008-05-13 17:50:23

GogglesGuy wrote:

Try opening /usr/bin in the GTK filedialog... you can go to lunch while it's listing the files...

Hell yes, that's annoying. I prefer QT over GTK(2) but I'm using applications of both toolkits as well. In fact, I'm a KDE fangirl!

mindfall · 2008-05-13 21:44:53

I'm a Qt/ Kde fanboy; I find Qt technically superior and also like it's look & feel when properly configured (default is ugly imho). I do however also like gtk's look (not so much the feel tho) and sometimes when I have the choice between a Gtk or Qt app will choose the gtk one.
I often see a pretty weird narrow-minded mentality in Linux places (or is it rather Ubuntu places?) to keep ones desktop ethnically.. err.. "toolkitally" clean. People who refuse to use a $TOOLKIT app they could really need, only because it would look inconsistent on their desktop.
Well, their loss, not mine, but I still find it strange

dunc · 2008-05-13 21:46:22

Arkane wrote:

SpookyET wrote:
You can make GTK apps use KDE widgets under KDE. You can't do that in reverse though. Look up GTK-QT.
I'm actually surprised there isn't a qt-gtk-engine out there. Or is there?

The closest I've seen is QtCurve, which has a GTK version that takes on all your Qt (or rather, KDE) settings: colour, fonts, etc. In a way, this is better; in my experience gtk-qt-engine doesn't really work very well, with glitches and performance issues. QtCurve looks almost identical in both toolkits, and the GTK engine's performance is among the best.

It would be nice to see more engines ported to the "other side", in both directions, with such tight integration of settings.

Susu · 2008-05-13 21:56:13

mindfall wrote:

People who refuse to use a $TOOLKIT app they could really need, only because it would look inconsistent on their desktop.
Well, their loss, not mine, but I still find it strange

I totally agree with that. I choose apps because they WORK for me, not because they use this or that toolkit.

schivmeister · 2008-05-14 12:34:54

GGLucas wrote:

Firstly, GTK was made for The GIMP (hence the name, Gimp ToolKit) and GNOME, GNOME was made as a sort of alternative for KDE, so you could say GTK was made in response to Qt, but it wouldn't be completely accurate, also, even if it was made as an alternative for Qt, in no way does this lead to GTK being inferior to Qt, especially not 10 years after date ...

Heh, did you not notice the RANT tag? That post is not to be taken seriously, because seriously, one would have to concur with the following and derivatives:

"people who refuse to use a $TOOLKIT app they could really need, only because it would look inconsistent on their desktop.
Well, their loss, not mine"

I'm always of the camp that has no problem waiting for libraries to be loaded, so no problem there.

GGLucas · 2008-05-14 13:31:14

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Last edited by GGLucas (2022-06-24 09:06:34)

arooaroo · 2008-05-14 17:23:47

b9anders wrote:

we've all seen plenty of flamewars involving kde vs gnome, vim/emacs, ubuntu vs all other linux, windows vs anyone, but I don't recall ever seeing much discussion about the differences between qt and gtk ...

So why bother creating this flamewar then?

Feel free to define some objective metrics in order to make some sort of constructive evaluation, but at present, let's face it, what value are you expecting from dozens of people giving extremely subjective views either side of the fence?

There's nothing wrong with being subjective, mind, it's just that one's opinions are only of real value to one's self. I know what my preferences are, and they are subjective, and the problem is that subjective thoughts tend not to rely on a great deal of reason. It just is.

I would say that I'm surprised by some of the GTK seems-more-open type views. Free software is free software. I think people are slightly deluded if they think that if a project is not run by a "souless corporation" it is somehow more open, more community orientated. Free software ONLY entitles you to source code. It's not some sort of automatic cooperative: if you are a user, you are not automatically granted the right to have a commanding say in the future direction of the project. The only thing a FOSS license gives you is permission to reuse the code, and on that basis, both toolkits are equal, although then you get onto another ideological flamewar about GPL vs LGPL...

Personally, as I user, I pay little attention to the toolkit - if the app does what I want, I'm a happy user. If I'm a developer, then I'd used the right toolkit for that particular project (that is also a partially subjective call, but at least you can give a bit more evidence. For example, the new QT4.4 lends itself very well for multimedia apps; or if you were restricted to C, your choice is made for you).

The joy of the OSS world, for me, is that I get qt AND GTK - why twist this to qt vs gtk?

lessthanjake · 2008-05-14 17:32:49

Arkane wrote:

SpookyET wrote:
You can make GTK apps use KDE widgets under KDE. You can't do that in reverse though. Look up GTK-QT.
I'm actually surprised there isn't a qt-gtk-engine out there. Or is there?

When you speak of the wind it starts to blow (or something like that):

http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2008/05 … qgtkstyle/

iBertus · 2008-05-14 20:55:27

The only Qt app I'm using currently is QGIS. I refuse to use something that drags in all of KDE or even GNOME. IMHO, far more Qt apps drag in KDE libs than GTK apps drag in GNOME libs.

zephyr · 2008-05-14 22:55:30

iBertus wrote:

I refuse to use something that drags in all of KDE or even GNOME. IMHO, far more Qt apps drag in KDE libs than GTK apps drag in GNOME libs.

I agree with you about the DE-lib dependencies, even though there are some must-have applications that belong to a desktop environment.

However you have made a mistake. Qt apps are NOT KDE apps (but KDE apps are Qt apps). "Qt apps" is a superset of "KDE apps".

Over-simplified but anyway: Qt apps depend on Qt libs only. KDE apps depend on both Qt AND KDE libs.

Take for example SMPlayer (Qt app, no KDE deps) and K3b (KDElibs needed).

The same applies to GNOME and GTK.

I like Qt (and KDE of course:lol:) more than GTK, yet of course that is a matter of choice.
However I hear that Qt is technically superior and provides more features, especially for developers.

b9anders · 2008-05-15 08:29:33

arooaroo wrote:

b9anders wrote:
we've all seen plenty of flamewars involving kde vs gnome, vim/emacs, ubuntu vs all other linux, windows vs anyone, but I don't recall ever seeing much discussion about the differences between qt and gtk ...
So why bother creating this flamewar then?

I assumed it was possible to have a comparative discussion without it necessarily devolving into a flamewar.

Feel free to define some objective metrics in order to make some sort of constructive evaluation, but at present, let's face it, what value are you expecting from dozens of people giving extremely subjective views either side of the fence?

I was half expecting some technical reasons for why one was superior over the other in terms of what you can do with it, load, etc. In short, whether there were reasons other than taste to prefer one over the other (obviously, for the end user that is what it will come down to, but not upstream). I think spookyET made a very good point:

Qt4.4 looks like kde 4 on linux, like vista on vista, and like mac on mac os x.
You can't say the same of Gtk2.

Also if you look at some of the theming possibilities for kde4, then they have things there there's no way you can do on qt3 or gtk2.

Basically I just wanted to get a feel for where we're at in terms of development and possibilities for the two projects.

Last edited by b9anders (2008-05-15 08:29:50)

Alvinistic · 2008-05-15 11:38:26

I don't think the author of this thread intended to create a flamewar. So let's just straighten some facts.

I am getting tired of people saying they prefer Gtk over Qt (or the other way around) just because it looks better. In fact, both Qt and Gtk support themes. Such argument just shows your lack of knowledge in the technical side. As for why Qt looks native in Linux (KDE), Vista, and Mac, it is not just about theme but rather because Qt lets the OS to draw the native widget. Gtk also has this capability in Windows through Gtk-Wimp but as far as I know it is not as advanced as Qt (as in Qt apps still look better in Windows than Gtk apps). And AFAIK Gtk can't provide a native cocoa look and feel under OS X (yet, I hope).

Setting aside personal preference, Qt4 is technically more advanced than Gtk2 at the moment, especially with the recent features in Qt 4.4 such as Widget on Canvas, QtWebkit, etc. I suppose (actually I hope) Gtk2 will catch up to reach the same feature parity.

Another popular myth is that Qt apps draws lots of dependencies. This is not true. I believe they meant KDE apps. If you install KDE app (i.e. konqueror) under GNOME, you will pull lots of dependencies. But likewise, if you install GNOME app (i.e. inkscape) under KDE you will also end up with lots of dependencies. Let's see Skype for example. It is a Qt app but NOT a KDE app. So when you install it under GNOME, it does not pull many dependencies like kdelibs etc.

As for the licensing issue, Qt licensing may give problem to big companies developing commercial software for Linux as they will have to purchase the license. But then it should not be an issue for open source developers who want to release the code under GPL.

I suspect the the growing number of Gtk apps may have something to do with rising popularity of Ubuntu (since it is using GNOME). Another thing come into mind may be the old-time programmers who once moved to Gtk because of licensing issue in Qt in the old days are just accustomed to it and reluctant to go back to Qt (remember, good programmers are lazy).

With that said, I don't think GUI toolkit should be an obstacle for someone to install some applications. Some people prefer having a pure Gtk or pure Qt environment (just like Ubuntu n Kubuntu). But IMHO, Linux is powerful and there is no reason for you to limit what your machine can do just because of GUI preferences.

Stoffi · 2008-05-15 12:02:37

I prefer QT.
Opera, which I use a lot, uses this toolkit, also, Trolltech was/is norwegian, and since I'm norwegian, that counts for me.
I try to keep a pure qt desktop, since I've heard it is better to only use one toolkit at once, performancewice, but in reality,
I use both at the same time, because I would rather have an application I prefer to use, than an application I prefer less
because it is built with the right toolkit.

lessthanjake · 2008-05-15 12:13:25

Alvinistic wrote:

I am getting tired of people saying they prefer Gtk over Qt (or the other way around) just because it looks better. In fact, both Qt and Gtk support themes. Such argument just shows your lack of knowledge in the technical side.

And that just shows your lack of respect for others preferences. I know how to develop in both qt and gtk and I KNOW that qt is superior technically, but I have not seen a single good looking qt theme/app. So guess what I prefer gtk. If I decide that for me a consistent and clean looking desktop is more important than custom un-themeable canvas bling-widgets then that is my decision, and it doesn't mean I have no technical knowledge.

I haven't seen a single qt-application that doesn't look like a mess. So it is just natural to blame the toolkit. There is of cause ugly gtk apps as well, but to achieve that they have probably put in a lot of work (ie. firefox).

Last edited by lessthanjake (2008-05-15 12:24:28)

Alvinistic · 2008-05-15 12:36:40

Stoffi wrote:

I prefer QT.
Opera, which I use a lot, uses this toolkit, also, Trolltech was/is norwegian, and since I'm norwegian, that counts for me.
I try to keep a pure qt desktop, since I've heard it is better to only use one toolkit at once, performancewice, but in reality,
I use both at the same time, because I would rather have an application I prefer to use, than an application I prefer less
because it is built with the right toolkit.

As far as I know, performance will be affected because you will have to load extra library to memory. So, using both Gtk and Qt will require you to load both Gtk and Qt library into the memory. But I think it does not affect performance (as in how snappy your desktop is) if you have sufficiently enough RAM. Maybe somebody can give an enlightenment about this?

As for GNOME and KDE apps, there may be an issue in desktop integration. But it should be less of an issue in the future as that is, I believe, the reason why freedesktop.org exists.

Last edited by Alvinistic (2008-05-15 12:39:21)

Alvinistic · 2008-05-15 12:57:56

lessthanjake wrote:

Alvinistic wrote:
I am getting tired of people saying they prefer Gtk over Qt (or the other way around) just because it looks better. In fact, both Qt and Gtk support themes. Such argument just shows your lack of knowledge in the technical side.
And that just shows your lack of respect for others preferences. I know how to develop in both qt and gtk and I KNOW that qt is superior technically, but I have not seen a single good looking qt theme/app. So guess what I prefer gtk. If I decide that for me a consistent and clean looking desktop is more important than custom un-themeable canvas bling-widgets then that is my decision, and it doesn't mean I have no technical knowledge.
I haven't seen a single qt-application that doesn't look like a mess. So it is just natural to blame the toolkit. There is of cause ugly gtk apps as well, but to achieve that they have probably put in a lot of work (ie. firefox).

When you put it that way, you have a point that Gtk have more great themes available to use. It is possible to make a theme for Qt to make it look just like Gtk (for example, QtCurve). The case is just that there is no Qt theme which suits your needs at the moment, but it is not impossible to develop. On a personal note, I think the Domino theme as well as the Oxygen theme feel GNOME-ish to me. Maybe that's just me.

And I think I need to clarify that it was actually intended to that group of people who compares Qt and Gtk based on their default theme alone. For example, I often found something like "I dun like Qt because it looks plasticky and the icons do not look professional". Obviously you are not within such group, lessthanjake.

Oh and one more thing, Firefox is NOT a Gtk app.

Edit: I just saw the QGtkStyle. Looks great! Maybe it can solve the inconsistencies in Linux Desktop to certain extent. Thanks for the info.

Last edited by Alvinistic (2008-05-15 13:10:44)

kuratkull · 2008-05-15 17:36:14

@ Alvinistic:

~% ldd ./Download/firefox-3.0b5/firefox/firefox-bin
...
libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 (0xb7b89000)
libatk-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libatk-1.0.so.0 (0xb7b6f000)
libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0 (0xb7aec000)
libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0 (0xb7ad1000)
libpangocairo-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpangocairo-1.0.so.0 (0xb7ac8000)
libpango-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpango-1.0.so.0 (0xb7a8c000)
libcairo.so.2 => /usr/lib/libcairo.so.2 (0xb7a16000)
libgmodule-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgmodule-2.0.so.0 (0xb7a13000)
libgobject-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgobject-2.0.so.0 (0xb79da000)
libglib-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libglib-2.0.so.0 (0xb7925000)
libX11.so.6 => /usr/lib/libX11.so.6 (0xb783c000)
...

And at your

The case is just that there is no Qt theme which suits your needs at the moment, but it is not impossible to develop.

It's the same as to say: "We should prefer C++ over C, because although the Linux kernel has not been developed in C++, it's still possible". [ok, not a very good example, but you get the point]
IMHO the "doesn't exist - but is possible" arguments don't hold much water.

Last edited by kuratkull (2008-05-15 17:46:41)

freakcode · 2008-05-15 18:10:54

Talking about "look 'n feel" won't take you anywhere. If you wanna compare toolkits, you need to compare it as developer.

I worked with both toolkits, and Gtk+ lags behind Qt on internal design, features and (most important) documentation. For fairness, let's say that the current Gtk+ 2.x cicle started on 2001, while Qt4 is fresh new, but Gtk+ definitely need to go 3.x, and fast. So, if you want an opinion from a technical angle, Qt is the winner.

Yet, as a user, I prefer Gnome and Gtk+ apps, they just feel better for me.

Alvinistic · 2008-05-15 18:39:42

kuratkull wrote:

@ Alvinistic:
~% ldd ./Download/firefox-3.0b5/firefox/firefox-bin
...
libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 (0xb7b89000)
libatk-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libatk-1.0.so.0 (0xb7b6f000)
libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0 (0xb7aec000)
libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0 (0xb7ad1000)
libpangocairo-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpangocairo-1.0.so.0 (0xb7ac8000)
libpango-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpango-1.0.so.0 (0xb7a8c000)
libcairo.so.2 => /usr/lib/libcairo.so.2 (0xb7a16000)
libgmodule-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgmodule-2.0.so.0 (0xb7a13000)
libgobject-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgobject-2.0.so.0 (0xb79da000)
libglib-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libglib-2.0.so.0 (0xb7925000)
libX11.so.6 => /usr/lib/libX11.so.6 (0xb783c000)
...

Firefox 3 uses XUL and makes it use gtk theme engine. So in a sense it is not a gtk app unless you consider any app using gtk theme engine as gtk app (which in effect causes qt4 app using QGtkStyle to be considered as gtk app too).
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

kuratkull wrote:

It's the same as to say: "We should prefer C++ over C, because although the Linux kernel has not been developed in C++, it's still possible". [ok, not a very good example, but you get the point]
IMHO the "doesn't exist - but is possible" arguments don't hold much water.

Yes, it is a bad analogy. But, I get your point

Last edited by Alvinistic (2008-05-15 18:47:11)

kuratkull · 2008-05-15 22:24:21

Thanks for the clear-up - i just got a bit smarter

Anyway, I found this topic today, because I am(was?) deciding between GTK and Qt.(I know C, but I know there are C bindings for Qt - and if Qt would prove itself, I might learn C++).

Anyway, looked up a tutorial on GTKs "Hello world". Found the one on GTKs homepage - scared me a bit, but not enough to keep me away from it. Then I decided to see what Qt4 offered for "Hello world" - behold(!), nice and short(== more actual C coding). Ok, cool, I will follow the tutorial to see if I can get it to run... NOT. It failed horribly with bazillions of errors in the Qt packages and then finally spit out a few lines that were "erroneus" in "my" code. [I also tried to reinstall Qt4/remove Qt3/reinstall them both/try Qt3 tutorial&package-ERROR/etc.]. I looked at the package size in pacman for Qt4 -> ~15Mb vs ~100Mb for the source on the Qts homepage. I followed the compiling of the official source until to the writing of "make", when i realized I didn't have enough free space on my root partition, so this is the one thing I didn't actually try - but I don't think this will work either, since the errors in the compiling of the tutorial weren't about missing files, rather about errors in the libs... weird.
Ok, then I decided to see GTK again... grabbed the official tutorial, retyped some examples into my "IDE" and compiled... voila! magic! So I guess I will be staying with GTK for now - not that it's completely against my will/bad, just it's a bit too "low-level" and seems to need much more time than Qt would.

I dare to guess that many people are "forced" to choose between environments the same way I am/was.

Arch Linux

#26 2008-05-13 13:22:08

Re: qt vs gtk - who is the winner

#27 2008-05-13 14:14:47

Re: qt vs gtk - who is the winner

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Re: qt vs gtk - who is the winner

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Re: qt vs gtk - who is the winner

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Re: qt vs gtk - who is the winner

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Re: qt vs gtk - who is the winner

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Re: qt vs gtk - who is the winner

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Re: qt vs gtk - who is the winner

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Re: qt vs gtk - who is the winner

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Re: qt vs gtk - who is the winner

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Re: qt vs gtk - who is the winner

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Re: qt vs gtk - who is the winner

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Re: qt vs gtk - who is the winner

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Re: qt vs gtk - who is the winner

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Re: qt vs gtk - who is the winner

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Re: qt vs gtk - who is the winner

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Re: qt vs gtk - who is the winner

#48 2008-05-15 18:10:54

Re: qt vs gtk - who is the winner

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Re: qt vs gtk - who is the winner

#50 2008-05-15 22:24:21

Re: qt vs gtk - who is the winner

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