Greetings, maintainer here, a KDE user using some GTK apps

[lah7]

Hello everyone! 👋🏼

I picked this project up from an unmaintained state in March 2021 as I wanted to ensure we classic users stick together to continue sharing tweaks that improve GTK3 so it's a little bit more comfortable to us non-GNOME users. I take no credit for the original patches, I'm mostly going to be here to co-ordinate patches and test. Check out the Contributors for full credits.

Despite looking after this repository, I can just about read C code, but not proficient at writing it, nor do I know GTK inside out, so help is always wanted!

My Journey ⛵

My Linux journey started in 2011 with Ubuntu with GNOME 2. Very nice desktop for productivity, great first impressions! 😍 I didn’t mind when it switched to Unity for a few years before settling on Ubuntu MATE in 2015.

Arch started to appeal to me as I like to roll with the latest software/libraries from upstream, and no more LTS upgrades. In around 2020, I switched to Manjaro KDE, later EndeavourOS, and then converted it over to vanilla Arch. I began adopting Qt applications during this time. In spirit of GNOME 2, my Plasma desktop is laid in a dual panel layout arrangement, just without “Applications, Places, System”.

I use Breeze for my theme/icons (I'm quite fuzzy with dark themes & icons). There are some GTK applications (Firefox, Disks, Inkscape, Meld) I still use, so these patches just make things a little bit better. Qt appeals to me since it has traditional metaphors, like menu bar/toolbars, and I enjoy coding in Python/PyQt.

Over to you ✋🏼

Come say hello and get involved! Regardless of desktop, distro or OS - star this repo ⭐ and let everyone know that there is demand and love for a classic GTK experience!

[2008bot]

Hi lah7,

I'm mrtribute on Ubuntu MATE forum. I just signed up to GitHub. I have avoided it in the past, but it was time.

I chose the name 2008bot because it was available and I started using Linux in 2008. Ubuntu was pretty magical in 2008 and Hardy Heron was a great release. After that I was really happy with the unofficial Ubuntu MATE 14.04.

Then came systemd so I switched to MX Linux and Xfce. I really like Qt5 apps, but for a DE there is something about the "to the metal" feel that gtk offers that I don't get from Qt. Gtk is instant and changes take effect immediately.

Gtk3 has been a nightmare, but it isn't without merits. When Xubuntu 22.04 is released I am going to try gtk3-classic. This seems like a great project. There are more regressions in gtk3 that you probably have already thought about. After I have tried gtk3-classic I might post about them here to hear if they have been considered for inclusion or not.

I'm more of an Xfce than MATE user these days although there has been more turmoil in Xfce than in MATE. I still use a lot of software from MATE in Xfce; Caja, Eye of MATE, Atril, Engrampa, MATE Screenshot, Log Viewer, Search Tool and MATE Calculator. Great software IMO. Not complicated, but does the job.

I don't know about the future of Linux. I think we need a stable community toolkit so that application devs can make applications that run unmodified 10 - 15 years into the future just like on Windows. The desktop paradigm was ready with Windows 95. Everything else is just polish and features IMO.

Maybe gtk3(-classic) can be a toolkit for the future, just like Trinity desktop forked Qt3. I'm thinking that if you are on a rolling release distro it would be an advantage to have a stable (non-changing) toolkit and DE. Then just the apps would roll and the potential for system impact would be less.

Sometimes I feel like a dinosaur, but I'm hoping there are more dinosaurs out there so that the classic desktop paradigm will live on.

[2008bot]

I have used gtk3-classic for some time. It's great. I don't have much to add.
I used to have a problem with grabbing the scrollbar and scrolling in Eye of MATE, but it was a problem that was fixed in Eye of MATE 1.26.

gtk3-classic allows gtk3 to go End-Of-Life with dignity and then it's Qt for desktop focused environments. I do feel a little sad writing this because it feels like the end of an era - the era that got me started with Linux.

I appreciate that you took the time to document (and to provide manual overrides) the regressions that gtk3-classic fixes.

Here is a screenshot of Xfce 4.16 with libxfce4ui-nocsd and gtk3-classic.
Xfce Taskmanager and Gcolor3 have been modified by gtk3-classic.

https://postimg.cc/wtPWR5nT

Thanks for everything lah7!