LXQt, the lightweight Qt desktop environment, has released a major new version, which brings with it a whole slew of very important changes and upgrades, with two main focal point.
First and foremost, the desktop environment is now using Qt 6 across the board, meaning the transition from Qt 5 to Qt 6 is now complete. To support themes and the LXQt File Dialog for Qt5-based apps you can install libqtxdg-3.12.0, lxqt-qtplugin-1.4.1, and libfm-qt-1.4.0 alongside the new Qt 6 variants for backwards compatibility. One exception here is QTerminal, whose Qt 6 port ran into some issues, so a separate Qt 6 release will come later.
The second major upgrade that’s still in progress is support for Wayland. LXQt 2.0.0 brings Wayland support for PCManFM-Qt, LXQt Runner, and LXQt Desktop Notifications, and for LXQt 2.1.0 they plan to make everything else available under Wayland as well. This means that more popular desktop environment like Cinnamon and Xfce are starting to feel a little out of step when it comes to Wayland.
One of the major user-facing new features is a new default menu for the panel which supports favourites, a new and improved search feature, and more.
Excited to see this. I use LXQt on all of my HTPCs and think it’s a very nice lightweight alternative to KDE for those that prefer the the Qt look and feel. Wish it got more attention. I’m a little sad to see a major release for the project got zero comments, while “Linus prefers tabs” gets 64.