Debian 13 - GTK2 issue

[Jonax]

Hi all!

After updating to the new Debian 13 Trixie most things work just fine but unfortunatley my existing programs downloadable from my site refuse to run on Trixie.

sudo apt install libgtk2.0-0

seems to help. But is an unsatisfactory solution.

Might be an X11/wayland issue. Or some setting in Lazarus/FPC.

Hopefully the issue will be resolved sooner or later.

Any thoughts about what is going on?

[SilverWarior]

Are your program compiled for 32 bit or 64 bit architecture?
If you check the release notes for Debian 13 you will see that they are dropping support for 32 bit architecture.
https://www.debian.org/releases/stab...-architectures

[Jonax]

My Linux programs are all compiled for 64 bit. The ReactOS programs on the other hand are made with 32 bit.

[SilverWarior]

It seems that Debian 13 dropped native support for GTK2 Interface which is Default UI Interface Lazarus builds it Linux applications for.

You need to configure your Lazarus to build your apps for Qt5 Interface instead. You can read more about Gt5 Interface and how to use it in Lazarus at: https://wiki.freepascal.org/Qt5_Interface#Linux

[Jonax]

​Thanks SilverWarior.

I must try Qt5. However from your link there is this caveat


Some distributions use Wayland by default (e.g. the default Fedora with a GNOME desktop) and Qt5 does not work with Wayland.


Indeed the Debian 13 does use Wayland. I can only assume Wayland will become more common in the future.


Either way this is a setback. I assume I got to mitigate by adding a line about the gtk2 thingie next to my system requriements. Hopefully the FPC/Lazarus team will eventually work out a reliable solution.

[SilverWarior]

​I must try Qt5. However from your link there is this caveat

Some distributions use Wayland by default (e.g. the default Fedora with a GNOME desktop) and Qt5 does not work with Wayland.

Welcome to Linux environment!
Unlike Windows environment that uses the same base user interface (GDI+ that has been introduced with WinXP or D3D for newest WPF and UWP applications) in Linux environment you will encounter multiple base user interfaces on with whom various desktops are being made. So if as a developer you want your application to be compatible with all Linux distributions you will most likely have to provide multiple versions of your application targeted at specific distributions.

So why are there so many base user interfaces for Linux?
Unlike windows that tries to be one OS suitable for all tasks different Linux distributions focuses to be bes suited just for specific tasks. This allows you to have very light Linux distributions that only contains the features that are needed for fulfilling certain taks that specific Linux distribution is targeted for and are not bloated with bunch of unnecessary features.

So yeah developing for Linux environment is not so easy as it might seem at first glance.