This is kind of… Well, good news, I suppose? It depends on where you allegiances lie, but it seems like Ubuntu is warming up to the idea of using Qt to develop applications. It’s no secret that Qt is a far more advanced development framework than Gtk+, so it only makes sense for Ubuntu – a GNOME/Gtk+ distribution – is looking at it.

The news comes from Matt Zimmerman, who writes about Qt on his blog. Speaking of keeping an open mind, he considers the possibility of using Qt on Ubuntu. “It is in this spirit that I have been thinking about Qt recently. We want to make it fast, easy and painless to develop applications for Ubuntu, and Qt is an option worth exploring for application developers,” he writes, “In thinking about this, I’ve realized that there is quite a bit of commonality between the strengths of Qt and some of the new directions in Ubuntu.”

The reasons for this new insight shouldn’t come as a surprise. Ubuntu is moving into mobile, and Qt has a long history there. Qt is very cross-platform, also very important to Ubuntu. Last, but not least, Qt has a pretty decent touch input framework, which, in this day and age, is a must.

“I think Qt has a lot to offer people who want to develop applications for (and on) Ubuntu, particularly now. It already powers popular cross-platform applications like VLC, not to mention the entire Kubuntu distribution,” he concludes, “It has strong commercial backing as well as a large developer community. No single solution will meet all developers’ needs, of course, and Ubuntu supports multiple toolkits and frameworks for this reason, but Qt seems like a great tool to have in our toolbox for the road ahead.”

Maybe this will mean Canonical will devote some time and money to the KDE project as well, which should eventually pay out for Kubuntu as well. Seems like good news all-around to me.