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2. What you wrote makes no sense. If linking to gtk provides nothing at all, why is the code even there?

3. Why is the default config for TRAMP so bad? It isn't spoonfeeding for everyone to not want to reconfigure it.

2. It makes perfect sense if you actually learn how Emacs works. It provides superficial elements like GTK-look-and-feel (scrollbars, menubars). Most Emacs experts disable all of these anyway, thus nothing of value is lost. On the other hand, toolkit-less Emacs tends to be a lot more stable. That was definitely the case for GTK since it had well-known bugs that the GTK developers refused to fix that would crash Emacs. I suggest you compile graphical Emacs on Linux without any toolkit (or with Athena/Lucid/Motif) to see for yourself.

3. Because there are trade-offs involved and the (informed) user should be responsible for enabling them.

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