LXQt

LXQt is an open source and totally free desktop environment for the GNU/Linux platform. It is the next generation of the LXDE and Razor-qt projects, providing users with a traditional, lightweight, yet modern graphical environment designed to replace the aforementioned DEs.

The idea of porting LXDE (Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment), which uses the old GTK2 toolkit, to the Qt framework has been heavily discussed in the past few months, simply because it couldn't be ported to the buggy and bloated GTK3.

During the same period of time, the development team behind the lightweight Razor-qt desktop environment were also considering a collaboration between the LXDE and Razor-qt project, which took place in July 2013.

Previously known as LXDE-Qt, the LXQt desktop environment is now stable and can be used in production machines, officially supported on the Arch Linux, Ubuntu, openSUSE and Siduction operating systems.

Being an open source project, its source packages can be easily downloaded from the project's homepage. However, the best way to install this fast, user-friendly and modular desktop environment in your Linux distribution is to use the packages provided on the default software repositories.

LXQt comprises of the PCManFM file manager and desktop icon manager, a session manager, tools for managing removable devices, an application switcher, a Qt port of the Openbox configuration tool, a Control Center, global keyboard shortcuts, PolicyKit agent, power management, and command runner.

The main goal of the LXQt project is to provide users with a blazing-fast and classic desktop environment that features a modern look and feel. Now that it is based on the award winning Qt GUI toolkit, it'll be developed for years to come without worrying that it will get old and deprecated.

Starting with June 2014, numerous LXDE- and Razor-qt-based Linux distributions will use the LXQt project as their default desktop environment.

What is new in this release:

• All packages are ready for Qt 5.11.
• Out-of-source-builds are now mandatory.
• libfm-qt is made more self-sufficient and less dependent on libfm, resulting in better performance and more flexibility.
• qps and screengrab have been moved to the LXQt umbrella.
• Improved overall translations.
• Made menu-cached optional (default=off) in panel and runner to prevent memory leaks and to avoid problems when restarting or shutting down LXQt.
• Improved LXQtCompilerSettings.
• Our (upstream) configuration defaults were moved to `/usr/share/lxqt`, distribution's overrides can be placed into `/etc/lxqt`

What is new in version :

• This release drops all compatibility with Qt 4. It also features heavy internal cleanups and refactorings. Qt 5.3 is now the minimum required version.
• LXQt 0.9 also brings in our first KDE Frameworks dependencies. KWindowSystem is a true-and-tested library for handling window events. It replaces our custom XFitMan library and will greatly help in becoming fully compatible with Wayland. KGuiAddons also replaces a hard dependency on Xlib in lxqt-panel. A huge thanks to the KDE team for making Frameworks available for projects like ours.
• Theme changes:
• New theme: "Frost". A cold, dark theme courtesy of Inti Alonso. Screenshots available on lxqt.org!
• A-Mego, Flat and Green have been deleted as they were low quality or too similar to other themes.
• The old Dark theme has been merged with the Flat Dark theme from LXQt 0.8. Please note that theme re-configuration will be needed if you are using one of the old themes.
• Component changes:
• The functionality of the old lxqt-power has been restored into an "lxqt-leave" component. It is now part of lxqt-session.
• Panel background is now configurable
• The main menu plugin can now be navigated using the keyboard
• The Clock plugin has been merged into the World Clock plugin. It has received several changes and no longer requires ICU. Reconfiguring the clock may be required upon upgrading depending on your settings.
• The power management component now supports displaying multiple batteries
• Other changes:
• KWindowSystem replaces XfitMan in lxqt-panel, lxqt-runner, lxqt-session, lxqt-notificationd and lxqt-session.
• KGuiAddons replaces a hard dependency on Xlib in lxqt-panel
• A copy of xdg-utils is no longer bundled with LXQt. The minimum xdg-utils version required is 2012-03-02.
• It should be noted that Qt 5.4 has several regressions from 5.3 which impact LXQt to some extent. While most have been worked around, drag & drop issues with PCManFM have not. Thankfully, that issue is fixed in the upcoming Qt 5.4.1 release.

What is new in version 0.8.0:

• Full Qt 5 support. Run cmake with -DUSE_QT5 to enable it.
• New component: lxqt-admin. This brings an optional set of basic admin tools such as configuration for date & time as well as users and groups.
• New theme: Plasma Next. Based on KDE Plasma Next theme.
• New theme: Dark Alpha, by Inti Alonso.
• Much improved support for multiple displays.
• Support for RGBA transparency if compositing is available.
• lxqt-config-randr has been removed. It has been replaced by lxqt-config-monitor.
• pcmanfm-qt: Support single-click to activate items
• pcmanfm-qt: Support drag & drop on the desktop
• pcmanfm-qt: Implement integration with the ark archive manager
• pcmanfm-qt: Improve readability in icon view
• lxqt-panel: Support reordering of taskbar buttons
• lxqt-panel: Support "urgency" hint
• lxqt-panel: Add support for OSS in volume control, if available
• lxqt-powermanagement: Improved compatibility with systemd/logind
• Integrate with compton if available (disabled by default)
• Add support for setting a default UI font
• Lots of performances improvements.
• Lots and lots of bugfixes.