Linux GUI development

c++ linux user-interface gnome kde
Brian R. Bondy picture Brian R. Bondy · Aug 30, 2008 · Viewed 8.4k times · Source

I have a large GUI project that I'd like to port to Linux. What is the most recommended framework to utilize for GUI programming in Linux? Are Frameworks such as KDE / Gnome usable for this objective Or is better to use something more generic other than X?

I feel like if I chose one of Gnome or KDE, I'm closing the market out for a chunk of the Linux market who have chosen one over the other. (Yes I know there is overlap)

Is there a better way? Or would I have to create 2 complete GUI apps to have near 100% coverage?

It's not necessary to have a cross-platform solution that will also work on Win32.

Answer

Zack Elan picture Zack Elan · Aug 30, 2008

Your best bet may be to port it to a cross-platform widget library such as wxWidgets, which would give you portability to any platform wxWidgets supports.

It's also important to make the distinction between Gnome libraries and GTK, and likewise KDE libraries and Qt. If you write the code to use GTK or Qt, it should work fine for users of any desktop environment, including less popular ones like XFCE. If you use other Gnome or KDE-specific libraries to do non-widget-related tasks, your app would be less portable between desktop environments.

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