GTK+ VS wxWidgets

Compare GTK+ vs wxWidgets and see what are their differences.

GTK+

Read-only mirror of https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk (by GNOME)
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GTK+ wxWidgets
15 51
1,335 5,673
1.7% 2.1%
9.8 9.9
about 5 hours ago 6 days ago
C C++
GNU General Public License v3.0 or later -
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

GTK+

Posts with mentions or reviews of GTK+. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-01-02.

wxWidgets

Posts with mentions or reviews of wxWidgets. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-10-19.
  • Building Apps with Tauri and Elixir
    14 projects | dev.to | 19 Oct 2023
    The Elixir programming language is no stranger to desktop applications as the language actually supports building them out of the box. It uses wxWidgets: a C++ library that lets developers create applications for Windows, macOS, Linux and other platforms with a single code base. But wxWidgets has a very complex API, and doesn’t solve issues that usually come with desktop applications around packaging.
  • WxWidgets – open-source C++ cross platform GUI
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 9 Aug 2023
    Qt is also 100% open/free. In fact, both are available under the LGPL, just that wxWidgets also grants an exception to not have to distribute application sources even when statically linked:

    https://github.com/wxWidgets/wxWidgets#licence

    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 9 Aug 2023
  • Need for GUIs for bioinformatic tools?
    3 projects | /r/bioinformatics | 17 Jun 2023
    But for big programs, ones written in C++? Good luck it won’t be easy at all. You might try wxwidgets or qt. I do not predict trying to click box-ify complex cli tools yielding much success.
  • IUP – Cross platform C GUI library
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 24 May 2023
    This seems to be like the classic wxWidgets [1], i.e. it's an API that wraps the underlying platform's default toolkit. So on Windows it uses Windows' native controls, in Linux it seems to use GTK, and so on.

    That means that the advantage is being able to write against one API, and get cross-platform compatibility, which can be nice. It also means (typically) being limited in what you can do to the least common denominator, or you (=the toolkit author) end up having to re-implement features from one platform that you want to expose but that are missing on some supported target(s). Or, of course, have an API with non-portable parts in it.

    In any case, it means the "look and feel" is not the core feature of the API since that is going to be "like the target platform" and that is the point.

    Given the origin, I guess Lua support is important too, here.

    [1]: https://www.wxwidgets.org/

  • Inkscape is hiring: Accelerating the GTK4 migration
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 21 Apr 2023
    In general, people will use a cross-platform library to port such applications. While QT will likely never really stabilize (I'd flag it unsustainable), the https://www.wxwidgets.org/ is able to be statically linked into commercial and opensource projects at no cost without tripping GPL.

    "Hiring a senior C++ developer with GTK experience is costlier"

    I think you are confusing skill valuation, and operational productivity. Some have an erroneous notion talent is interchangeable. Likewise, applicants with identical base skill-sets on their CV often mistakenly believe they even have long-term employment options (outsourced, youth tax credit churn, and or senior wage suppression).

    Most FOSS people are easier to train, as most already can mitigate utter chaos already. =)

  • Is it possible to build a gui which is both cross compatible and native?
    6 projects | /r/rust | 7 Apr 2023
    There are a few like that do that in the C++ community. WxWidgets is the most famous/popular with this approach.
    6 projects | /r/rust | 7 Apr 2023
    There are a few like that in the C++ community. WxWidgets is the most famous/popular with this approach. But it is a library almost impossible to use in other languages because their api is heavily templated.
  • GUI programming in C++
    2 projects | /r/cpp_questions | 17 Jan 2023
    wxwidgets If you prefer to use actual native widgets If you don't like Qt Fewer users = less help, less features
  • how can i design a desktop app with dart
    2 projects | /r/dartlang | 1 Dec 2022
    Using FFI, you should be able to access something like wxwindows, I guess. That's cross platform then. And more high level. And it would probably a fun exercise to write a Dart wrapper for that library.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing GTK+ and wxWidgets you can also consider the following projects:

imgui - Dear ImGui: Bloat-free Graphical User interface for C++ with minimal dependencies

FLTK - FLTK - Fast Light Tool Kit - https://github.com/fltk/fltk - cross platform GUI development

gtkmm - Read-only mirror of https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtkmm

nana - a modern C++ GUI library

nuklear - A single-header ANSI C immediate mode cross-platform GUI library

libui - Simple and portable (but not inflexible) GUI library in C that uses the native GUI technologies of each platform it supports.

NanoGUI - Minimalistic GUI library for OpenGL

ncurses - snapshots of ncurses - see http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses.faq.html (no pull requests are accepted)

CEGUI