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Recommended Linux GUI toolkit?
I've previously been writing with QT but only because it's cross-platform. It's really neat and fancy, but the website that hosts it makes finding resources, like references, very damn difficult to find. I've gotten tired of writing programs that support em all equally. I'm wondering, are there any GUI toolkits that you'd recommend for Linux? I'm currently on a machine running X11. I've heard that X11 may soon by made outdated by another system called wayland or something like that, if it's true, what should I do about that?
It partially depends on the distro you are using. If you're on gnome you might prefer gtk for instance. I've found that you have to research a bit and choose the library that fits your current needs. There are a lot of gui libraries out there, and you'll find similarities between many of them. I've toyed with qt, gtk, sfml, and sdl. I wouldn't say any one holds the major advantage in all situations, sfml and sdl are more ready for speed if you are writing an action game, but qt and gtk can get a lot done with less writing on your part. All of them are compatible with opengl so you can access your graphics card's 3d environment. I also haven't seen any advantage to using a non-crossplatform language at this point.
Read a couple of tutorials for each library you consider, often it is the amount of community support that can get you off to a better start.
I know that qt has a program in the repositories that holds good documentation for each widget. Gtk went through a bit of an upheaval when 3.0 came out, I'm not sure if that's calmed down in the last year.
You can mix and match since sdl and qt can play well together.
I mostly say don't worry about wayland, it's working pretty smooth with these gui's when I run it on Fedora. I'm pretty certain the final goal with wayland is to be set up in a way that it can slide in smoothly to replace X11. There will be some rough ground as each distro has different personalities, but that shouldn't be felt much on the app-developer's level. (And there's the chance that your distro will stay with X11, it still works after all is said and done.)
Read a couple of tutorials for each library you consider, often it is the amount of community support that can get you off to a better start.
I know that qt has a program in the repositories that holds good documentation for each widget. Gtk went through a bit of an upheaval when 3.0 came out, I'm not sure if that's calmed down in the last year.
You can mix and match since sdl and qt can play well together.
I mostly say don't worry about wayland, it's working pretty smooth with these gui's when I run it on Fedora. I'm pretty certain the final goal with wayland is to be set up in a way that it can slide in smoothly to replace X11. There will be some rough ground as each distro has different personalities, but that shouldn't be felt much on the app-developer's level. (And there's the chance that your distro will stay with X11, it still works after all is said and done.)
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I have heard that FLTK is quite good, and it might be something worth checking out.
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FLTK is what Bjarne Stroustrup uses as his GUI library in his "Programming: Principles and Practice Using C++, 2nd Edition" book.
FurryGuy: How much of FLTK does he cover. I have really been considering getting that book for a while now.
Wow, I posted this on the eighth of August and it's only first got a reply on the 16th. Anyways thanks. I'm using ArchLinux so I can swap X11 with Wayland manually. I'm not really running a DE, I'm just running X+openbox+lxpanel. I guess I want something that sits right with all sorts of DE's. I've looked at a few listsz of toolkits, but they're way outdated. I was just wondering what you guys use. So far I have QT, GTK and FLTK to consider.
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