GTK1 vs GTK2

[ujjwal]

GTK (Gimp toolkit) is possibly the most common toolkit used by linux graphical applications for their interface. Earlier GTK was known for is speed and lightness, and this is very true about GTK1 programs, they are light and have a fast and snappy interface.

However, GTK2 seems to be comparitively much slower, and applications built around it are much slower than GTK1 applications. Mozilla runs faster than firefox and so on ... very few GTK2 apps (like GAIM) run quickly, the others just appear bloated. What is the reason for this performance difference ? In the looks department, both look near about similiar, except for a different colour scheme, and there doesn't seem to be too much difference otherwise.

For a long time I have been using the GTK1 version of applications, like Xchat 1.8, gtk-gnutella, sylpheed etc. However it seems that most applications seem to be heading the gtk2 way, as all modern distro's carry both versions of the toolkit. Is there any way to make gtk2 as fast as gtk1 where performance is concerned?

[pallavnawani]

Hi,

At this point, nobody knows why GTk2 is so much slower than Gtk1. Part of the reason is that GTK2 is much bigger and bloated than GTK1. GTK2 also supports antialised fonts, and in general, everything about GTK2 is much more complicated than GTK1, making it slower. But the problem is that it is much slower than it should be.

I am afraid you cant do anything to make it faster, unless you find and fix the problem which is slowing GTK2 down.

Pallav

[ujjwal]

Hmm, thats too bad. I always expected that the problem of unneccessary bloat would exist only fo closed source software, for which no one would be able to find the underlying problem, let alone fix it. Anyway, hopefully the toolkit will improve and become faster with time. GTK1 and QT till then