Installing GTK 4 into Linux distributions

This section describes how to install GTK 4 into Linux distributions.

There are two ways to install GTK 4.

Installation from the distribution packages

The first way is the best and easiest way to install it. I’ve installed GTK 4 packages (version 4.8.1) in Ubuntu 22.10.

$ sudo apt install libgtk-4-dev

It is important to install the developing package (libgtk-4-dev). It includes C header files. Otherwise, you can’t compile any GTK 4 based programs.

Fedora, Debian, Arch, Gentoo and OpenSUSE also have GTK 4 packages. Package information for Arch, Debian/Ubuntu and Fedra is described by Installing GTK from packages. The following table shows the distributions which support GTK 4.

@@@table |Distribution|version|GTK 4|GNOME| |:-:|:-:|:-:|:-:| |Fedora|37|4.8.2-2|GNOME 43| |Ubuntu|22.10|4.8.1|GNOME 43.0| |Debian|bookworm(testing)|4.8.2|GNOME 43| |Arch|rolling release|4.8.2|GNOME 43| |Gentoo|rolling release|4.8.2|GNOME 43| |OpenSUSE|Tumbleweed(rolling release)|4.8.2|GNOME 43| @@@

Installation from the source file

If you want to install a developing version of GTK 4, you need to build it from the source. See Compiling the GTK Libraries section in the GTK 4 API reference.