QT or GTK?

chizu · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 28 Apr 2003 Posts: 127

Just wondering which one gentooers prefer.

KungFuHamster · Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2003 4:11 am Post subject:

no good can come from this thread...
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chizu · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 28 Apr 2003 Posts: 127

Heh, but I would like to see how it turns out... :twisted:

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zez · Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2003 4:36 am Post subject:

50/50 right now...

This is going to be so useful :lol:

chizu · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 28 Apr 2003 Posts: 127

well so far its working better than asking on irc, only one person replied out of 3 channels.

Mnemia · Guru Joined: 17 May 2002 Posts: 476

I like QT's API (only because I actually *like* C++

) but a lot of good apps are written only for GTK. I found it really easy to learn how to program GUI apps in QT.
Personally I think QT is nicer from an isolated end-user perspective but if you're going for a "pure" one toolkit system then I'd go with GTK as it has better apps (IMHO).
I say it doesn't matter - install both and just use whatever apps you want under one of the lightweight window managers.

maor · Guru Joined: 28 Aug 2002 Posts: 323

my vote go for qt.
from aprogrammer point of view qt just build better . is much easier to implement things with qt then gtk even if u know both of them good, development time with qt will be much shorter although u can can get with both of them the same result (well i think it's come to this that i like OOP more).

chizu · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 28 Apr 2003 Posts: 127

I think it does matter, a unified gui toolkit would be really great. It would provide users with a good fluid experiance and would lower the system requirments of linux/X11 a bit. I myself use gtk for development because of its speed, non-commercialness (qt=trolltech), and most of my apps are gtk based. I primarly program in C++/Perl5.

chizu · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 28 Apr 2003 Posts: 127

Actually I think my speed thing may be due to using qt mainly with all of kde. Anyone have any benchmarks for QT vs GTK? Like how much system resources it takes to make a button in QT compared to GTK.

Mnemia · Guru Joined: 17 May 2002 Posts: 476

chizu · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 28 Apr 2003 Posts: 127

or perhaps if they were combined...

yeah, like that will happen.

Mnemia · Guru Joined: 17 May 2002 Posts: 476

Well, to each his own. I like the fact that I have a choice in these sorts of things and I think the diversity helps good new features find their way into both toolkits. GTK and QT are each superior in different areas and it's quite likely that successful and well-received features from either will eventually make their way into both.

For me, application diversity is more important than consistency of UI. That's obviously a tradeoff but I like the fact that Linux allows users to make their own choices about how much they want to balance things.

CRC · Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2003 7:45 am Post subject:

chizu · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 28 Apr 2003 Posts: 127

Well, the portability with respect licensing was more along the lines of what I meant. The lgpl qt port to windows by kde and recent lgpl'ing of qt for MacOS X seems promosing though.

And what I mean by a single button test, would be a series of timed tests involving startup time, widget creation time, memory usage, etc... Although you're right, this would be wildey innaccurate and not very useful due to complexity.

maor · Guru Joined: 28 Aug 2002 Posts: 323

Lovechild · Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2003 9:40 am Post subject:

QT for technical superior design and ease of use.

GTK for looks and direction.

I voted GTK because that's what I look at every day but I wish some of the thought that has gone into QT was applied on GTK.

idl · Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2003 11:30 am Post subject:

GTK.

Never had a need to have Qt installed.

charlieg · Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2003 11:58 am Post subject:

This is actually a little deeper than you might imagine.

Qt is propietry. There's no 2 ways about it. You need a license to use it commercially and the development is mostly behind closed doors (try and locate a bugzilla).

Gtk is GNU (Gtk - Gimp ToolKit, Gimp - GNU Image Manipulation Program), which basically means it's free as in GPL free (which is not truly free, as BSD advocates would quickly add).

The "I prefer C++" arguments (Qt being C++, Gtk being C) don't really hold because of the gtkmm bindings (C++ bindings for Gtk) unless you are arguing that from the pespective of further developing the toolkit as opposed to just using it.

Also, there's Perl, Python and Ruby bindings for Gtk (among others). I have not seen equivalents (at least not announced on freshmeat) for Qt.

However, I hear that Qt's API is a little cleaner / more considered than that of Gtk. Yet Gtk apps tend to look a lot nicer in my opinion. (IMO Qt apps tend to look cluttered, whereas Gtk apps tend to look nicely polished).

So you have to approach it from several angles and ask yourself, "do I...":

...want something that is free as in speech software? (Gtk)
...need something commercially supported and developed for a range of platforms including embedded ones? (Qt)
...find the Qt API easier than the Gtk/gtkmm API? (?)
...need more specific language bindings? (Gtk)
...want to be involved in further developing the toolkit? (Gtk)

In the long run, both will prevail because of their respective strengths. Personally, I'm a Gtk app fan and only have KDE/other-major-Qt-stuff installed for the sake of curiousity.
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Cossins · Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2003 12:15 pm Post subject:

Lovechild · Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2003 12:21 pm Post subject:

Wrong of the QT license thing Cossins.

The license is GPL and QPL - which means if you plan to keep the source and sell your product closed source then you have to pay Trolltech a lot of cash.

This is a good business model but it's not truely free.

Ben2040 · Guru Joined: 07 May 2003 Posts: 445 Location: UK

Hi
I'm not going to do anything like coding or selling the toolkits, so I think about what affects me.

SPEED

So using your object oriented brains, is there a noticable speed difference between the two or is it impossible to tell?

Ben

pilla · Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2003 12:41 pm Post subject:

Deja vu.
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zhenlin · Veteran Joined: 09 Nov 2002 Posts: 1361

No lock?

Hmmm...

You forgot these options:

Cocoa/AppKit
Motif
Xlib

But nevermind.

GTK+ is programmed using the lowest common denominator: C. From there, many bindings. It uses its own object-oriented extensions, glib.

Qt is programmed using the fattest OOP language: C++. Yet, it is the more coherent, integrated of the two. But then again, maybe that has something to do with the philosophy behind KDE.

mvr_rennes · Apprentice Joined: 23 Oct 2002 Posts: 155

I like QT better than GTK... maybe because I used to be a KDE user (now I'm on fluxbox) and so I'm more used to it, and I think it looks better.
A haven't got any real programming experience with QT (just a couple of tests), but I liked it. As for GTK, I've used it with Ruby bindings (and then only because there aren't ruby bindings for QT 3), and I found it nice too (although ruby-gtk2 is quite unstable as of now), so my preference is based on aesthetics, mostly.

duff · Guru Joined: 19 Jun 2002 Posts: 466 Location: Clemson, SC

Hmm...depends on the version.

Gtk2 > Qt3 > Gtk1 ... and so on