> Debian GNOME team has a goal of removing gtk+2.0 from Forky before
the release of Debian 14 in 2027.
> Debian is not the only distro doing this.
Other distros like Arch have well supported unofficial repos that still
provide the Gtk2 package when it is needed. Debian does not. This is a
false equivalence. By removing Gtk 2 support you will be breaking many
applications you may never even heard of.
It does not hurt Debian at all to keep packaging Gtk2 and making it
available. It is stable software and there have been no changes for
decades. Just because some Gtk2 software has bugs doesn't mean Gtk2 is
bad or has no uses or users.
> As mentioned in our 2020 MBF [4], besides being unmaintained for
years, GTK 2 does not support either HiDPI or native Wayland.
GTK2 does not need to support HiDPI or native Wayland. Just like all the
Wayland programs do not support running on xorg or even other wayland
compositors not sharing their wayland protocol extensions used. This is
not actually a show stopper problem. It is minor and would only apply to
those actually using Gtk2 applications and those demographics likely
aren't wayland adopters.
On behalf of the Debian Gtk2 users that still exist:
Please don't break people's applications for no reason. If you need
someone to take over packaging Gtk2 then make the call for it. If
required I will do it as it's quite simple.
- superkuh
p.s. The release of Gtk3 did not replace Gtk2 just like the release of
Gtk4 did not replace Gtk3.
