LXQt is the Qt port and the upcoming version of LXDE, the Lightweight Desktop Environment. It is the product of the merge between the LXDE-Qt and the Razor-qt projects: A lightweight, modular, blazing-fast and user-friendly desktop environment.
LXQt 0.7.0 brings you a fast and stable desktop environment, already usable in production desktop machines. It will not get in your way. It will not hang or slow down your system. It is focused on being a Classic Desktop with a modern Look & Feel. Already available on most mainstream distributions and with partial FreeBSD support.
This is exactly what I’ve been wanting in this department: a straightforward, no-nonsense Qt desktop environment that doesn’t shove touch nonsense in my face and, doesn’t try to impose upon me a very specific way of working, and doesn’t try to be everything to all people at all times.
Take out the word “Qt” and you just described OpenBox, which is the WM that LXDE of old used. It’s my go-to WM on any non-Windows machine.
I have found OpenBox a lot more sluggish than Fluxbox.
I don’t notice a difference on my workstation with an SSD, but on older machines Fluxbox and Blackbox are slightly faster. They are also too limited for my needs though, so it’s a tradeoff I’m willing to accept.
OpenBox, nice as it is, is not really a “desktop environment” though.
I said as much, didn’t I? Anyway, LXDE is only a desktop environment in the loosest of definitions. It’s a mashup of several different projects built around OpenBox; you can swap out lxpanel with tint2, and PCMan with Thunar, and call that a DE if you want.
Edited 2014-05-09 10:18 UTC
Hmm..not exactly:
Result: a straightforward, no-nonsense desktop environment.
😛
Yes, I did:
Fair enough, my bad.
Have you looked at the latest incarnations of Enlightenment? It’s pretty snazzy.
Maybe a little effects heavy – I haven’t spent much time trying to tame it, but it at least the way it operates is simple and to the point. I suspect that once all the glitz and glamour of the UI is toned down, it’s a serious contender for what you might be looking for.
E has always been heavy on the sparkle, though. IIRC, it’s the first effects-heavy WM to come out, or, at least attain any level of popularity.
Enlightenment is the standard bearer for the whole EFL stack, so as configured by upstream it’s in everything-turned-on tech demo mode. I believe there are some tamer theme packs and icon sets you can use.
Looks pretty KDE-ish at the first glance (that’s a good thing). I guess it’s good to try it to compare it to actual KDE and to see what’s different.
Edited 2014-05-09 00:16 UTC
I’m really looking forward to using this. It’s the escape from GTK for those that don’t like KDE (or find it too heavy), and it’s not susceptible to ‘random’ GTK3 changes upstream. (XFCE will face this if they migrate fully to GTK3.)
They are making their first mistake, they want to use KWin, the most bloated window manager ever.
Well, it could be worse. It could be… gasp… Mutter. At least KDE4 as a whole including KWin could always run semi-adequately on a system that doesn’t have graphical hardware acceleration for whatever reason (in Linux, often due to proprietary drivers and the lack of decent free software/open source alternatives). I can’t say the same about GNOME 3 with Mutter.
Don’t know if Mutter could be worse, but KWin is not compatible with the LXQt philosophy, what are they thinking? KWin is bloated, to memory hungry, is configuration is a mess, nothing good is going to result from this.
Edited 2014-05-09 02:32 UTC
At least it’s compatible with the technology stack for the moment, and I’m sure that whether by revision or replacement, a lean Qt-based alternative to Compiz and Mutter will emerge.
Honestly, I don’t see KDE as that bloated. More to the point, it’s actually got a lot of features most of us use, loaded up front and better integrated. Even a decade ago, as I tried to make a Linux laptop as spry as I could, various window managers (IceWM, WindowMaker, Gnome as it was then) and an assortment of apps (Firefox etc.) picked individually and loading their individual resources were not as responsive as a cohesive environment where the libraries were shared effectively, and the environment kept consistent.
The power of today’s hardware is making the current level of fragmentation bearable, though it is definitely suboptimal. I look forward to Qt and streamlined KDE libraries making it possible for environments like LXQt and Hawaii thrive.
I’m thinking maybe the LXQt developers knows best what is compatible with their philosophy and what is not.
And I’m sure that the LXQt developers know that the “L” in LXQt stands for light, and I want to think they have common sense.
Edited 2014-05-09 15:53 UTC
Funny how it’s always people who’s not involved in a project who think they know better than anyone else what the project philosophy is and what the direction should be.
And funny how there is always someone also not involved who gets offended by it.
I’m on the LXDE mailing list. What they’re exploring is using KWin 5.x as a Wayland compositor.
KWin 5.x is intended to be lighter and more modular than KWin 4.x.
I actually welcome it since KWin is the only Wayland compositor I know that has committed to supporting “force server-side window decorations” behaviour.
I will be happy if they leave out the obligated applications. The only reason I don’t use KDE is that I have different preferences for most of the included apps. They are supposed to fix it so that apps won’t be tied to the DE on KDE, but we’ll see.
Edited 2014-05-09 01:59 UTC
Most applications created by KDE have been independent of the DE product since their beginning.
Even years ago people have already been using KDE applications on other environments.
E.g. K3B had been the CD/DVD burning program even for people who ran simple window managers as their “DE” of choice.
Heck, there are KDE applications that run on Windows, Mac OSX or mobile platforms such as the Nokia N9. None of which runs the KDE desktop.
In most cases the alleged dependencies of KDE applications on the KDE desktop/workspace are misinterpretations of package manager outputs based on resolving “addon/extension level” rules.
I hope this ends up being the ultimate No-BS solution.
An article about an OS? An article about a desktop environment?? On OS News??? Wow, what a concept, I don’t think I can handle this, it’s just too much of a breath of fresh air from the endless re-posts and tirades about patents. LOL
One wonders why you didn’t submit it yourself?
I tried the initial beta of LXQt yesterday. It is pretty good, basically like using Razor-Qt with a few additional applications and the perks of LXDE’s nice, calm layout. I wouldn’t call LXQt production ready yet, there are defintely some bugs. Nothing major, but little annoyances like the volume control not working properly and the clipboard not always working. Give the project a little more time and I think it will be a solid experience. I think this merger of LXDE-Qt and Razor-Qt is good, the new desktop has the strengths of both without any serious drawbacks.
This post immediately reminded me of an website I read recently about what the heck “lightweight software” really means (I don’t remember where I got it from, I apologize if it was OSNews!):
http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2013/04/what-makes-a-lightwei…
It’s not my website and not my opinion, I was simply reminded of it. It’s an entertaining read.
If you have two words… well sort of words anyway: Razor and LX. Which one would you pick for your combined project?
I’m just saying: Don’t we have enough acronyms as names for desktop environments? Razor would have been unique. I was happy when I first heard that name.
I was a KDE user since the 0.9 version, then version 4.0 came and… well I honestly tried, I tried very hard to like it, but I can’t!! I just can’t! It is a great pile of bloatware that have little use with all that stupid plasmoids talk, they simply shot their own foot with 4.X series.
Then, I started using lxde that is really nice and simple, but as a developer and user I like Qt millions times better than Gtk (grid nightmare for devs). Then I installed this lxqt, and man, it is even faster than the old gtk on my Ubuntu box! It simply works and don’t get into your way of using the apps. I recommend you all test it to have a glimpse of a true slim DE.
The screenshot on lxqt.org looks like it
uses kwin which pulls in kdelibs/kde-workspace.
Weren’t they going to use openbox as default window manager?
http://lxqt.org/static/img/screenshots/1.png
Edited 2014-05-10 15:33 UTC