Linux GUI development

Question

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 / Gnom

Answer 1

I recommend wxWidgets or Qt. They are both mature, well-structured and cross-platform, with decent documentation and sample source code.

Answer 2

Gnome apps work on KDE desktops and vice versa; you won't be locking anyone out. As far as toolkits go, it's fairly subjective. All of the toolkits are fairly cross-platform. If you're not open source, then GTK+ would be the cheaper option, as Qt is only free for open source use, whereas GTK+ is LGPL.

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

Have you thought of using Mono? Programs like Paint.NET work great under Linux & Windows.