GTK vs GNOME

[nonewmsgs]

gnomes are the guys on the travelocity comercials with the hats. what is a gtk? i thought they were the same but i heard that they weren't and projects for each differ. so what's the deal?

[mips]

Gtk is a toolkit for building GUIs.

http://www.gtk.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTK+

[Bachstelze]

And it happens to be the one Gnome apps use. However, not all GTK apps are part of Gnome.

[nonewmsgs]

now i was reading somewhere about some distros use only gtk or only gnome. why would that be?

[k1001001]

From the WIkipedia article on GNOME:

GTK+ uses the Lesser General Public License (LGPL), a free software license that allows software linking to it, such as applications written for GNOME, to use a much wider set of licenses, including proprietary software licenses.[4] The GNOME desktop itself is licensed under the LGPL for its libraries, and the GPL for applications that are part of the GNOME project itself. While Qt is dual-licensed under both the QPL and the GPL, the freedom to link proprietary software with GTK+ at no charge makes it differ from Qt.

[brentoboy]

Xubuntu uses gtk apps, but not gnome

Gnome is a full desktop. it has all the settings apps and menus and whatnot.

Gnome has a selection of libraries that it uses so that all "gnome" applications use the same graphics toolkit (gtk) and remote procedure call library, as well as several other libraries that escape me at the moment. Installing a single Gnome App has a tendancy to add a whole slew of libs that are used by all the other Gnome Apps.

installing a GTK app only installs the graphical toolkit libs, and is much lighter weight (but doesnt always do as much).

Gnome is also a single project under one big umbrella that tries to have an option for each of the common application types that most users generally want. (not a bunch of independant applications) GTK apps tend to be single app projects, which people pool together into a "gtk" desktop.

Xfce is an example of another GTK based desktop project that doesnt have all the other gnome libs

Also, a fair number of people on the forums here seem to use either openbox or fluxbox with a bunch of GTK apps and really like the results.

hows that?

[nonewmsgs]

i get it now :D i read a few things first and scratched my head.
thanks everyone!

[Sayers]

Its pronounced let me see if I can type sounds

Guhnome

[K.Mandla]

Xubuntu uses gtk apps, but not gnome
Actually, that's changing (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=532094), even though some people (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=521787) don't care for the trend.

But otherwise an excellent explanation. Thanks. ;)

[Bachstelze]

now i was reading somewhere about some distros use only gtk or only gnome. why would that be?

Sure you're not confusing GTK and KDE ?