Bigger issue here is they're removing everything that depends on gtk2.
pamcake•Feb 25, 2026
Well that's a bummer. There's a whole generation of barely-if-at-all-maintained but still perfectly working utils that will probably be forever lost to obscurity with that.
Recently I wish Debian was more Debian.
stonogo•Feb 25, 2026
With the possible exception of Hexchat, I'd wager any such tools were already lost to obscurity.
curt15•Feb 25, 2026
Does gtk2 still have Debian maintainers? Whatever is in Debian's official repository is effectively endorsed by Debian. If they don't have enough capacity it's wiser to drop support than to sign off on something of unknown quality.
dmz73•Feb 26, 2026
I hate losing access to software just because it is "unmaintained".
If module is "endorsed" now, since it is included in current version, and there is no maintenance, so no changes made to it, why is it suddenly not good enough to "endorse" in the future?
No, security issues do not count as they don't magically appear, either they are in there now and debian is fine with distributing "insecure" code or they don't matter.
Debian is fine with shipping broken version of software for years as long as they consider it "stable" so why drop working "stable" software just because no one is making changes to it?
awakeasleep•Feb 27, 2026
Losing access or losing convenient access that other people do work to maintain for you?
canistel•Feb 25, 2026
- GTK2 is only one of the supported widget sets for Lazarus. It supports Qt5 & 6 too. I feel Lazarus should switch to Qt5 or 6 until GTK3 is mature.
- Hexchat IRC client is another popular application that is still stuck with GTK2.
presbyterian•Feb 25, 2026
Considering we're on GTK 4, I think GTK 3 is as mature as it's gonna get.
hulitu•Feb 25, 2026
Mature ? I would say obsolete. Just wait for GTK5 or GTK6.
kvemkon•Feb 25, 2026
This has been reported here but got not enough attention:
"Debian GNOME team announces intent to remove GTK 2 in Debian 14" (08.01.2026)
You can step up and be the maintainer of GTK2 (or anything else that would keep the 'deletionists' at bay) any time you want. Go on...I'm sure you have unlimited time and resources like all the other Debian maintainers.
rurban•Feb 26, 2026
Nonsense. You just need to make building the gtk2 unit optional, so that the distros can still build it. Almost no one needs gtk2, just Lazarus. Usually debian maintainers are happy to patch the build system to do that. They got a bad one.
The harder part is to upgrade Lazarus to qt6. Until that happens, Lazarus needs to be shipped as snap, flatpack or appimage with the gtk2 so's.
kjs3•Feb 26, 2026
Until that happens
Exactly. "Let me explain how some else needs to do this thing, and how easy it is, and how that someone else needs to get right on that for my convenience". Because you're here to condescend, not to actually do anything.
The maintainer driving this in Debian explicitly said:
> That being said I would not object if someone wants to take over the maintenance of GTK2, though I believe keeping it for beyond duke is beating a dead horse.
I'm sure they can be easily ported to GTK3, GTK4 and then GTK5 /s
anthk•Feb 25, 2026
That's the curse on the Unix world. At least FreeBSD, NetBSD (OpenBSD not by design, but that's understandable because of security) have their compat libraries on plus some of them (even GTK1) in their ports. On 9front, I just adapted Russ Cox' Xword (some crossword player for XWord files, it has a converter from Across Lite Puz files to Xword) for modern times, barely a few lines changes in some drawing function for software made for Plan9 4ed or close.
PD: Guix can do the same as fbsd and nbsd because, well, setting up an isolated environment with time-bound tools it's basically what Guix was born for, reproducibility. Scientific repo for a paper must be run point to point as we had a Slackware setup with Slackbuilds in 2007? That's the point of Guix. You would say... docker. But docker it's overkill.
AlexeyBrin•Feb 25, 2026
Didn't FreeBSD recently dropped their 32 bits x86 version ? At some point every open source OS will remove the parts for which no one is willing to put the work on maintaining it.
iberator•Feb 25, 2026
NetBSD still supports 32 bit, and VAX 780 from 1979.
Best OS ever, highest quality and probability.
anthk•Feb 25, 2026
OpenBSD it's much easier to setup than NetBSD, on user friendlyness obsd beats nbsd, but as you said nbsd it's better on portability, I can literally run NetBSD 10.1 under simh/vax running under... 9front. No X, because the emulated ethernet in the port of simh here just simulates nat with no option to bind it outside, although I didn't test it further. But for sure it runs at decent speeds, almost like an emulated Pentium 90, enough to run Slashem under vt(1) (vt100/220 emulator for 9front).
kev009•Feb 27, 2026
As long as you don't need to touch the drive layout. I think the NetBSD installer is quite a bit better otherwise.
jonp888•Feb 25, 2026
If you plough through the first pages so far as I can tell it seems like actually it won't be removed.
Certainly not FPC, because the hard dependency on GTK2 was a misunderstanding.
For Lazarus it seems like dependency on GTK2 is considered a bug and not a fundamental incompatibility, because there are too many GTK2 applications to completely remove it from Debian.
potus_kushner•Feb 26, 2026
maybe the best and simplest solution would be to not remove gtk2 from debian. the last release is stable and there's no technical reason to remove it (as it still works and compiles just fine), only political ones.
mghackerlady•Feb 27, 2026
But! But! Unmaintained >:(!!1!!11!!!1
guywithahat•Feb 27, 2026
I don't like how political debian has been becoming in a number of facets, I've moved all of my machines over to Ubuntu and Arch and am happier because of it
bpt3•Feb 27, 2026
You don't like decisions being based on political factors (rather than technical merit I assume, but feel free to correct me) yet you moved to Ubuntu?
I don't like it either, but that's not the direction I would go. I haven't looked into Arch yet in enough detail to have an informed opinion, but maybe I should.
kev009•Feb 27, 2026
Ubuntu is Debian with an additional layer of awkward decision making.
8 Comments
Recently I wish Debian was more Debian.
- Hexchat IRC client is another popular application that is still stuck with GTK2.
"Debian GNOME team announces intent to remove GTK 2 in Debian 14" (08.01.2026)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46548257
P.S. Still hope GNOME maintainers let other volunteers maintain GTK 2.
They already said this is fine: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2026/01/msg00146.html
The harder part is to upgrade Lazarus to qt6. Until that happens, Lazarus needs to be shipped as snap, flatpack or appimage with the gtk2 so's.
Exactly. "Let me explain how some else needs to do this thing, and how easy it is, and how that someone else needs to get right on that for my convenience". Because you're here to condescend, not to actually do anything.
?
> That being said I would not object if someone wants to take over the maintenance of GTK2, though I believe keeping it for beyond duke is beating a dead horse.
Source: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2026/01/msg00146.html
The Nix or Guix package managers are likely your easiest bet. See
https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Lazarus
https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/developmen...
PD: Guix can do the same as fbsd and nbsd because, well, setting up an isolated environment with time-bound tools it's basically what Guix was born for, reproducibility. Scientific repo for a paper must be run point to point as we had a Slackware setup with Slackbuilds in 2007? That's the point of Guix. You would say... docker. But docker it's overkill.
Certainly not FPC, because the hard dependency on GTK2 was a misunderstanding.
For Lazarus it seems like dependency on GTK2 is considered a bug and not a fundamental incompatibility, because there are too many GTK2 applications to completely remove it from Debian.
I don't like it either, but that's not the direction I would go. I haven't looked into Arch yet in enough detail to have an informed opinion, but maybe I should.