Once hailed as the most free and widest used X toolkit, the future of GTK+ now looks dire. The gnome developers have essentially highjacked the latest version, GTK3, and are actively destroying all ability of non-gnome users from using this once popular toolkit. I find this very unsettling, as I have developed a number of my own desktop applications using GTK+ through all three of its major versions. I've always preferred GTK over QT, but with some of the recent changes, I'm starting to change my mind.

Of course, I'm hardly alone in this opinion as many other projects have abandoned GTK in the recent months. Take Audacious, for example. This GTK music player has had increasing troubles with the gnome developers screwing things up. So many troubles that they are now planning on switching toolkits rather than further deal with the upstream management. Although they had a functional GTK3 port, they've officially reverted back to GTK2 until they can properly refactor their entire program into QT.

I've been a happy user of the XFCE desktop environment for the last few years. This light and easy to use UI gets out of the way and just plain works. However, the interface toolkit of XFCE is tied to GTK2 and its authors have no clear upgrade path. A similar project, LXDE, has also seen the writing on the wall and are well into a rewrite project that switches their preferred toolkit from GTK to QT.

Although the "G" in GTK stands for "GIMP" this popular image manipulation program has yet to release a GTK3 version. Even Linus Torvalds' own pet project, Subsurface, has recently abandoned GTK for QT. Is the future of GTK+ programs doomed? Can a revival project, such as Mate, takeover maintenance of the GTK toolkit for the rest of us? (let the gnome people screw up their own fork)

Not sure what happened, and Distrowatch king Ladislav Bodnar isn't saying, but a couple of days ago, Distrowatch.com went off line. A day or two later it was back, but as distrowatch.org.

Ladislav writes:

As many of you noticed, the distrowatch.com domain name was suspended by the domain's registrar, Doteasy, last Sunday. I don't want to go into details about what exactly happened as it's a long and boring story. Suffice to say that I feel grossly aggrieved by the series of greedy and even malicious actions taken by Doteasy and as soon as I get this sorted out, I will be looking into transferring the distrowatch.com domain name to another registrar. If any of you have a recommendation for a good registrar (preferably with customer support personnel that is competent), please let me know in the comments section below or send me an email.

Glad to see it was just bureaucracy, and not Distrowatch going off line. I love that site and visit it on a pretty regular basis, even though I'm pretty loyal to just two or three distros and almost never try out those exotic, little-known ones.

Bad news for the little browser that could: not only is Firefox no longer a "little browser" but it is increasingly having trouble competing. Back in 2009, Firefox was on the rise. But now, not only is Chrome eating its lunch but Firefox's user share is actually slipping. Netmarketshare provides the data and SJVN provides the analysis/funeral rites. He suggests:

For Firefox to remain a web browser power, it needs to make big improvements and it needs to make them now. Otherwise, Firefox may yet follow its predecessor Netscape into the web's past.

[ed. note: as a steadfast Opera user since 2000, this is all fascinating. Opera seems pegged-for-life at 3%]

Seems like 80% of the world's scientists are working diligently on designing the newest smart-watch or cellphone. Boring! This poll asks: where should we be investing our time and energy? Understanding that to a degree, there is overlap in disciplines (better waste disposal could easily lead to progress in energy production, for example), where should we be investing our time and energy for maximum human impact?

This is a borda poll, so give "1" to your first preference and "6" to the field you prefer the least, etc., and we'll see which fields float to the top.

Good news from our friends over at Soylent News! They have finished their incorporation as a Public Benefit Corporation under the "SoylentNews PBC" name. While this structure is not a full 501(c) Non-Profit Organization, it does convey the founding idea of "we aren't just another company out to maximize profits and screw our users" while also being significantly easier to setup (no tax exemption issues to deal with.)

Pipedot and Soylent News both launched at nearly at the same time in reaction to Slashdot's obnoxious disregard of its user base. While each site has its own strengths, they both fill nearly the exact same roll as an alternative to Slashdot. Because I don't want to split our already rather small community and duplicate the same effort, I'd suggest everyone reading Pipedot to look at Soylent News for daily news and discussion.

This does not mean that I'm abandoning Pipedot or stopping the development of the code rewrite project - I'm just giving notice to Pipedot readers that I'm focusing my efforts on development and not on posting a dozen news articles every day / excessively advertising for new users / recruiting new staff / etc... Of course, if you do want to help out, or submit a news article, or help spread the word - by all means, please do!

Pipecode continues to add features and functionality and will continue to progress for the foreseeable future. For example: users can now upload images, share news links, micro-blog their status and other nifty things well beyond what Slashdot ever offered. Our wonderful editor (zafiro17) has volunteered his own website as a guinea pig for the upcoming syndication support. Soon, articles and comments will no longer be tied to a single host and flow in a larger "network" of servers.