[unwind]

This really echoes with me too, I have a semi-big (but not so popular, at least not any more) application [1] that has gone through GTK+ 1.x, ported to 2.x, ported to GTK3, that I feel I "should" port to GTK4 since it's out.

But I just can't be bothered to even try to prioritize that since all I read about v4 is anger, weird new libraries with strange names ("libadwaita" sounds like a Disney character library) and stuff.

It really felt back in the day like the developers bringing out GTK+ 2.x where, like, on the case and really doing good clever work to bring out a solid platform for application development, and for a while (at least to me, but I was very biased even then) it was the mainstream/default/major choice in Linux GUI application development. Sure some people liked Qt but GTK felt like the home turf.

[1] The strangely-named "gentoo" file manager; I don't even think the site is up, sorry.

[throwaway82652]

You can just ignore all the lame social media drama. The main reasons to use GTK4 is probably for the performance fixes and hardware acceleration. If you don't care about that and the idea of porting seems unfun then yeah, don't bother.

But you're right there was a lot more developers and funding involved in GTK2 days.