The GTK project, a cross-platform UI display framework, has announced plans to discontinue the use of two backends: the original X11 and Broadway, a subproject that displays GTK as HTML5 through a browser. This change will take effect in GTK 5.
Broadway is being phased out due to low usage, while the X11 backend, a window manager system closely integrated with GTK, has been around for a long time due to the open-source world transitioning to Wayland, a new window management protocol. Ubuntu and Fedora have started using Wayland since 2010. GTK’s continued support for X11 is to maintain backward compatibility on older machines, but marking the X11 backend as deprecated in GTK 4.18 signals that it’s time for X11 to go. The transition will happen in the next minor version of GTK 4.18 and will be completely dropped in GTK 5.
Aside from X11 on Linux systems, GTK also plans to end support for aging Windows 10 and set the minimum macOS version to 10.15.
Source: GTK, Phoronix
TLDR: GTK is discontinuing the X11 and Broadway backends in favor of modernization and improved compatibility, signaling major changes in the upcoming GTK 5 version. Additional changes include dropping support for Windows 10 and increasing macOS minimum version to 10.15.
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