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LXQt – The next generation of the Lightweight Desktop Environment

150 points by abaschin 12y ago

uncletaco 12y ago
So would that acronym be pronounced "looks cute"?
- VogonWorkEthic 12y ago
  It should be, well played.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
ChuckMcM 12y ago
Not trying to be a problem here, but what problem does this solve? Why does someone undertake to make a new desktop environment? Is XFce/Kde/gnome/cinammon/what-have-you not enough?
- jiggy2011 12y ago
  This seems to be an evolution of LXDE which has been around for a while and is the default desktop on the raspberry pi for example. As for why the switch the Qt, I'm guessing it's because the next version of Unity/Ubuntu will be Qt based so this will be more compatible with that.
- cwyers 12y ago
  Well, this is a merger of two of the what-have-yous, LXDE-Qt and Razor-Qt. So it actually reduces the number of desktop environments in the wild, by one.
- jamesaguilar 12y ago
  LXDE is a lot faster than any of those, at least on my dev machine. I would recommend you give it a try. The difference was noticeable with Eclipse+Jumpshot+a full compilation of my project (a surprisingly common trio of things that I do).
- chongli 12y ago
  I'd guess the main idea is to try and create a comfortable environment for new users migrating from Windows. Personally, I'm glad to be done with overlapping windows and graphical file browsers. I use Xmonad, urxvt and bash.
- Shamanmuni 12y ago
  Problem 1: you have a slightly old machine (512MB or 1GB of RAM) or something like a Raspberry Pi and you want a resource-efficient but modern-looking desktop. Problem 2: you want a VM with a DE but don't want to spend too much resources in it. Problem 3: you have a modern computer but prefer to have a lightweight DE and let the rest of the resources be used by your applications. Both LXDE and Razor-qt consumed about 100MB of RAM, I would expect something similar from LXQt. All the other DEs are heavier, XFCE is just a bit heavier but at least for me LXQt looks a lot nicer. And as it was pointed out, it's a merger of LXDE and Razor-qt, so it's the complete opposite of the "many Gnomes" situation. Kudos to that.
  - rrmm 12y ago
    another usecase I've encountered is a single system hosting multiple users running persistent desktops remotely via x2go or tigervnc.
  - ChuckMcM 12y ago
    Ok, thanks for that list. I pretty much had 'xfce' as the solution there but can see the user model of Qt being a good component swap. I'll certainly build a VM with it to try it out, but my concern is that unless it gets some sort of traction it will just sort of fizzle out as folks graduate and move on to other jobs.
    - jnbiche 12y ago
      I doubt it. LXDE has been around for quite a while. It was already established when I started using it 5-6 years ago. I've been using Mate (on Mint) happily, but I'll definitely give this a try on one of my laptops.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
    - pekk 12y ago
      They are both relatively slow, so it was reasonable to mention them both in the context of something which is useful for machines that are relatively slow.
- mhitza 12y ago
  I don't like Gnome3 or KDE. I just need a bottom panel. I'm already used with configuring Openbox, LXDE is just a layer on top of that. If LXDE wouldn't exist, I would just use XFCE.
  - noisy_boy 12y ago
    Having used Fluxbox, Windowmaker, KDE, Gnome and Cinnamon, I find XFCE's start menu design the most productive. Recently used items appear on the top and you can start typing and the menu items start filtering - this happens for some other DEs as well but XFCE's matching is truely outstanding. I'm able to get to any item in less than 2 seconds (obviously I've assigned keyboard shortcuts to frequently used items) - very satisfying.
- venomsnake 12y ago
  My "eyebrow dismissal" comment seeing the title was "can we at least focus on current gen". But after reading this seems like a normal evolution of a well received project. And Qt seems like is here to stay. So probably not bad decision from technical point of view too. It was nice when I used it.
- zokier 12y ago
  I think Razor-Qt was created partially as a reaction to KDE4 launch which was less than stellar, bit similar to the Cinnamon vs Gnome3 situation. LXDE on the other hand was specifically crafted for low-end systems. It's homepage says that it has been tested on PentiumII/266 with 192MB of RAM among others. LXQt is the new merger of the two projects.
- detrino 12y ago
  I think there is a huge opportunity for a traditional, lightweight desktop that uses Qt. Both the Gnome and KDE camps have alienated large parts of their userbase during the KDE4/Gnome3 transition. I personally find both to be less usable than their predecessors. That leaves projects like Xfce/Mate to fill the gap. The problem with these environments is that they use GTK2, which is bitrotting. Migrating to GTK3 is risky in that it has essentially become the Gnome toolkit. It's version number and releases are synced with gnome and it regularly breaks old code and themes as well as bending to Gnome's UI vision. If LXQT can build something like a modern Gnome2 or KDE3 I could see them claiming a lot of happy users.
  - fsiefken 12y ago
    the modern gnome2 already exists as 'gnome3 classic mode' or mate (which will support gtk3). lxde is also nice.
    - mdellabitta 12y ago
      This essentially IS LXDE.. That project's developers merged with another team to work on this. LXDE's going to be maintained for a while, but I imagine it won't get as much attention anymore.
    - detrino 12y ago
      Gnome3 classic mode is mostly just Gnome3 + some extensions. The user interface is only superficially similar to Gnome2. Most things feel crippled compared to what came before it and it loses functionality on every release. Mate is excellent and truly deserving of the title "modern Gnome2". It's my desktop of choice. Under the hood it's using a lot of Gnome3 tech while the user interface is familiar and usable for desktop users. The problem remains, however, that it is stuck with either a languishing GTK2 or at the mercy of Gnome with GTK3.
      - airtonix 12y ago
        crippled, interesting. Perhaps you'd like to explain further?
- steele 12y ago
  Well, this website isn't called Pragmatist News. Intellectual curiosity? Unhappy with existing OSes? Fun? Not a fan of a specific license? These are just guesses of course.
higherpurpose 12y ago
Please make the new LXQt prettier and more modern, too. I wish I would use LXDE/Lubuntu on older machines, but it's just so ugly I can't stand it. I think the next best thing for people like me right now is the MATE environment for Linux Mint, but it does use a bit more resources than LXDE, too.
- jamesaguilar 12y ago
  Depending on what you mean by "prettier," that would kind of defeat the purpose of LXDE.
  - Debilski 12y ago
    For starters, they could try to get the spacing in and between UI elements right. For example, the text in drop down menus looks pretty misaligned in those screenshots.
    - pjbrunet 12y ago
      That's the first thing I noticed on their homepage, the spacing looks off to me too. It's a matter of balancing tension between visual events, not something you learn in high school art class ;-) On the other hand, I'm usually on a laptop and want to cram as much information as possible into a small space. I love how Gmail has cozy, comfortable and compact modes!
- orkoden 12y ago
  Every time I try LXDE I switch back to XFCE. XFCE is a lot more rounded and integrated. LXDE always feels just like a hodge podge collection of tools, that don't really work together.
- gerbal 12y ago
  Modern features tend to mean fancy-3d-compositing-features which are not lightweight. I do think the default LXDE theme looks rather windows 2000/Gnome 2.6. However, changing the theme is not hard and LXDE can use any XFCE themes. Hopefully the new LXQt preserves that compatibility.
yarrel 12y ago
"Qt" and "Lightweight" do not go together.
- jamesgeck0 12y ago
  Really? Qt used to be quite a bit snappier than GTK+. Is this no longer the case?
  - mhitza 12y ago
    > OK, back to what most user will concern, the resource usage. > To be honest, migrating to Qt will cause mild elevation of memory usage compared to the old Gtk+ 2 version. Don’t jump to the conclusion too soon. Migrating to gtk+ 3 also causes similar increase of resource usage. http://blog.lxde.org/?p=1013 http://blog.lxde.org/?p=1013
- Zardoz84 12y ago
  You are wrong. 1) QT works better when you not have accelerated drives (ie SVGA driver in X11) 2) The time in Nokia, QT was optimized to run in a mobile !! So must they tuned it to be more lightweight.
stephen 12y ago
Interesting; I didn't realize LXQt was the next-gen LXDE vs. just being a fork/sibling. I'm currently using Lubuntu which is Ubuntu+LXDE but then with Xmonad as a window manager and really enjoying it.
harrystone 12y ago
I wonder if this will finally replace WindowMaker on my desktops. Don't laugh, it works.
- hderms 12y ago
  I remember WindowMaker impressing the hell out of me about a decade ago. Used it for a good while until I migrated to Gnome.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  WindowMaker representin'! It totally does: fast, stable, restartable (kill -USR1 <pid>), lightweight, stays out of the way, easily configurable, portable config files, and a very, very, very consistent UI over the past 17 years that I've been using it (nearly a decade of which it saw virtually no dev activity and, frankly, didn't need it -- updates have started trickling in again). Thing is, after nearly two decades, it's solidly ingrained into my desktop use habits. And while I try alternatives from time to time, they always leave me running screaming back to good old wmaker.
cgh 12y ago
Some years back, I worked with Qt 3.x and quite liked it. A pure Qt desktop would be interesting but I've never used LXDE. How does it compare to Openbox, which is what I use via Crunchbang? I realise Openbox is "just" a window manager so I'd like to know what additional benefits LXDE offers.
- gerbal 12y ago
  LXDE uses openbox as its window manager. So it's openbox with a more robust ecosystem build around it.
- pjbrunet 12y ago
  I'm a Crunchbanger too. Nobody can say Crunchbang looks like Windows95, just browse the forums and see what people are doing with it http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewforum.php?id=6 http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewforum.php?id=6 You might find some useful info regarding Crunchbang/LXDE here http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=24640 http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=24640 Part of the appeal for me as an artist and hacker, the Crunchbang community is incredibly creative. You can see the personality and careful attention going into the screenshots. Any pixel on the screen is fair game for customization. In my opinion, it's worth the effort to tweak your config files and get exactly the look you want. For me it's a balance between functionality, getting the most from my laptop's small screen, while creating a pleasant work environment that I don't despise. FWIW I still use Openbox but disabled the decorations. I use pytyle2 to manage windows. Pretty much I use the Crunchbang default colors, dark but not too dark, works well at night as well as in daylight.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
zobzu 12y ago
hmm I use KDE (latest) with indexing disabled, akonadi disabled, 3d desktop effects disabled it seems very similar to LXQt and the project it replaces when it comes to resource usage and useability, except it is more mature and support a few more things. Thats basically what keeps me on KDE. I would think KDE should disable akonadi and stuff by default personally - its super useable without all the heavy weight "crap". Alt-F2, konsole and kwin basically are the reasons I use it. Here's an example, too: I can tile my windows on any desktop i want with kwin without sacrificing non-tiling windows. I can even mix tiling and non-tiling. I dont have to remember 20 shortcuts for this, it works with the mouse too. Basically, its seamless. (Thats also why I use it over awesomewm for example)
- Zancarius 12y ago
  > I would think KDE should disable akonadi and stuff by default personally - its super useable without all the heavy weight "crap". I agree. Unfortunately, they replaced Nepomuk with Baloo in 4.13 (I think; Baloo seems more aggressive than the former) and have effectively taken the stance that users cannot (easily) disable it [1]. It's somewhat infuriating, because adding your home to the ignore list doesn't appear to work as advertised and it'll happily index everything including /var (bug?), NFS mounts, and anything it gets its grubby mitts on. The only solution I found that works is here [2] because there's no longer a UI to disable it (unlike Nepomuk). Beyond that, you're absolutely right: With all the cruft disabled, KDE is quite nice (long time user here as well). That said, I'm happy with KDE, and I enjoy it in part because of the eye candy (probably a poor excuse). I've used LXDE on an old laptop before but there are always features that I seem to miss. Otherwise, it's great for users looking to avoid the cruft or have limited resources. LXQt brings some of the clean appearance of modern KDE with it, so that's a definite plus. It makes me eager to take it a spin, then possibly try it out on that old laptop--which doesn't play nicely with KDE no matter what's disabled. [1] http://vhanda.in/blog/2014/04/desktop-search-configuration/ http://vhanda.in/blog/2014/04/desktop-search-configuration/ [2] https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1390267#p1390267 https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1390267#p1390267
  - m_ram 12y ago
WoodenChair 12y ago
The lightweight Linux desktop environments have been battling for years now over who's Windows 95 clone is better. It's a nice paradigm because it's familiar to many users and serves its purpose. However, does low resource usage necessarily imply lack of innovation regarding user experience? Or does familiarity in this space just trump other concerns and experimentation should be left to the fat environments like Gnome, Unity, and KDE?
- coleifer 12y ago
  Sounds like another satisfied Apple customer.
- ANTSANTS 12y ago
  I think it's worth noting that there's never been a "weird" WM/DE that attracted a sizeable userbase purely on its own merits. Gnome 3 and Unity were to a great extent forced upon their users. If there were real benefits to means of desktop interaction that differed significantly from the established "Windows 95" and "tiling WM" modes, you'd think there'd be a few enthusiasts on the side exploring this realm and touting its productivity advantages. I'd bet the majority of the lightweight "Windows 95 clone" WMs and DEs exist because GNOME and (to a lesser extent) KDE alienated their userbases by trying to be "different" and "next generation" (mostly by poorly cloning OSX and the latest Windows version that nobody liked anyway), so I'd hesitate to say that experimentation should be left to them. EDIT: Many commercial products suffer from this problem where the existing version is "good enough" and people are happy using it for several hours a day, but the producer needs to convince users to purchase the new version anyway, so they end up adding a lot of pointless, irritating, and even product-breaking changes just to make the new version seem revolutionary and worthy of an upgrade, even if it's actually making the product worse. Many open source devs don't seem to have realized that there is no reason for them to play this game. They don't need to sell anyone a new version in a cardboard box, so there's no conflict of interest here; they can do less work and make their users more happy by keeping things stable and incrementally improving things. Yet, very often, they ape Microsoft, Adobe, and company's spastic thrashing anyway. More ribbons!
  - 12y ago
watersb 12y ago
Qt runs fairly lightweight on top of the native BCM compositor of the Raspberry Pi. [1] I wonder how this LXQt might compare to Maynard [2] resource usage. [1] http://youtu.be/0j-Wakm5B84 http://youtu.be/0j-Wakm5B84 [2] http://www.raspberrypi.org/preview-the-upcoming-maynard-desktop/ http://www.raspberrypi.org/preview-the-upcoming-maynard-desk...
listic 12y ago
How does this version differ from what's in Lubuntu 14.04?
stevenwagner 12y ago
All these comments are good and all, but only Chromebooks and Ubuntu have brought forward a instant user friendly experience for users who don't want to Google around to get things working properly by default.
andrewstuart 12y ago
How come these things never look refined and polished? Always sort of half nice and Unix-clunk.
- scythe 12y ago
  Personally I think it's the goddamn panel; I've never seen a Linux panel that looks as nice as its counterparts on Windows and OS X. It seems like a small component, but it really "frames" the whole desktop environment -- like a drumbeat -- and in both OS X and Windows there are some complicated gradients in the panel that I'm almost certain were insisted on by some tweed-clad hipster with a title half a sentence long; to my eye it really does make a difference. The windows actually look really nice, especially considering it's the default skin.
  - andrewstuart 12y ago
    Unix desktops always seem to have weird inconsistent margins and fonts that somehow don't look right. Just doesn't feel nice.
  - kijin 12y ago
    It takes a professional designer (or rather, a dozen of them) to produce a professional-looking desktop theme. Which is exactly what the majority of FOSS projects lack. When you let a programmer dictate the design, you end up with a lot of features and a lot of misaligned margins. In my experience, many programmers just don't care about pixel-perfect designs. Yes, I'm talking about the same group of people who scoff at typography because "the content is the only thing that matters", blah blah blah. Admittedly, I have no data to back this up, but I have a gut feeling that lightweight desktop environments are particularly teeming with this "function before form" crowd. When you treat design as a second-class citizen of your project, it's no wonder you can't attract good designers to work with you. On the other hand, when you let a designer dictate the design, you end up with perfectly aligned margins and anti-aliased corners, but all the features and configuration options you care about are hidden behind five clicks and a keyboard shortcut, or worse, removed entirely because they somehow violate the designer's philosophy :(
mrmondo 12y ago
Wow blast from the past, it looks awfully like something out of the early / mid 90s
- CrazedGeek 12y ago
  For some of us, that's all we want.
noisy_boy 12y ago
I'm using XFCE and Cinnamon on my Linux Mint 16. Can anybody comment if they think installing LXQt (via the PPA) could break my existing DEs? I really want to give this a try as I like to try out different DEs.
dredmorbius 12y ago
I more or less completely dislike change in my desktop environment. That said, I think there's room for some innovation, particularly simplification, in the Linux space. And if this creates a usable alternative for people, so much the better. The first principle of GUIs is that there's been very little real innovation since the first demos at Xerox PARC at the Mother of All Demos 46 years ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos). And there's been little reason for it. Once people understand how to interact with the basics of their interface, there's little gain, and a lot of cost, to changing things. Most computer interaction is textual. Some isn't. Supporting text, formatted text, images, video, and sound is pretty much the entire scope of what needs to be done. The best interfaces haven't changed much. Apple's Aqua interface is hardly changed from its introduction in 2000 -- that's 14 years. Some visual elements have been modestly restyled, and virtual desktop support added. That's pretty much it. Other attempts to push radical UI changes on users have been dramatic failures, whether from Microsoft or Linux. Windows 7 was an absolute flop, and I'm among those who've been massively disappointed and frustrated by the GNOME 3 and KDE 4 transitions. While neither is my primary desktop, I do interact with them occasionally, and with apps designed for them more frequently. The experiences have been disappointing and frustrating, to say the least, as well as the attitude shown toward users by the development teams (Linus Torvald's outburst to GNOME was pretty much on point). The place to experiment, IMO, is precisely where LXQT is: in an experimental space, away from the mainstream. If the desktop does prove useful, people will tend to migrate toward it, as has happened with the xfce desktop: not as featureful as GNOME or KDE, but vastly less frustrating and more useful (I also try it from time to time). My own home? WindowMaker, which I've used for 17 years. I know it, it knows me, we work well together, and I see no reason to change.
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  Did you mean to say Windows 8? I think Windows 7 is doing just fine, and the UI didn't really deviate from before.
  - dredmorbius 12y ago
    My error then. I'd checked and thought Metro was associated with Win 7. I've used Windows so rarely in the past decade I'm not familiar with the specifics of which UI goes with which release. Though now that I think about it, I've seen Win 7 and it's more similar to the Win XP interface.
Lunatic666 12y ago
What about making a new Desktop not only fast, but also pretty? All the Linux Desktops look butt-ugly compared to OS X or even Windows 8 and absolutely don't make we want to give it a try. A nicely designed Desktop which is also fast and uses less resources would help getting Linux on the Desktops so much more...
- exDM69 12y ago
  > What about making a new Desktop not only fast, but also pretty? The reason for this is that there are relatively few graphics artists who use Linux desktops and contribute to the desktop projects by creating graphics. But there are quite pretty custom desktop themes created by people. You can look at /r/unixporn for example. Most of the screenshots there are from the tiling wm (dwm/awesome/xmonad/i3) crowd but every now and then someone posts some pretty Gnome/KDE/LXDE/Xfce screenies and themes as well.
- JohnDoe365 12y ago
  The reason is that there is no central steering to define the workflows of Apps and how and when UI elements should be used and how. That's why QT is used extensively in KDE, as it brings a lot of UI elements by default to alleviate this lack of steering.
- airtonix 12y ago
  Personally I feel that Gnome Shell is far more appealing than Windows (anything) or MacOsx. I just showed a MacOSx user the alt-drag window resizing.... totally blew his mind, as in he couldn't understand why that wasn't a feature of MacOSx: "The Simple Operating System"
hyperion2010 12y ago
So I have been using fluxbox for 7 years now and it does nearly everything I need. There is one feature that I have been looking for that I have not seen in any window manager that I know: the ability to group windows so that they raise and lower together. Yes I have virtual desktops, but I really, really want to be able to link the terminal window I use to test a file I am editing, to the vim window where I am editing said file. Does anyone know of a window manager that can group windows so that they raise together? Or perhaps something more like: 'when I raise this window also raise these windows.' Obviously you need a bit more logic to deal with the ordering of windows within a raise group, but this seems like a feature that is completely missing from all current window managers.
- Pxtl 12y ago
  Honestly, I've always wanted a window-manager that mimicked Visual Studio's pin/dock slide-outs. That is, you can dock any task to any edge of the screen, and each edge can be sub-divided into panes. Each pane has multiple tabs, and each pane can be set to auto-hide or can be "pinned" to always-visible, which causes everything else to resize. It's a rather complicated approach, but I've never found any better multi-tool layout, since it's enormously Fitt's-law-friendly while allowing me to both hide everything or bring in oodles of tool panes quickly and easily as needed.
  - XorNot 12y ago
    Cinnamon is slowly moving in that direction I'd say. It has the ability to snap a window to the edge and have the dynamic-desktop size shrink to accomodate it (i.e. hitting maximize will only use the remaining unsnapped space). I suspect it could be extended to use this to start setting up tiles automatically.
  - Zecc 12y ago
    I haven't tried them (just found out about them now), and I know it's not exactly what you're looking for, but there are WMs that allow you to have nesting virtual workspaces. It could be an approximation. http://common-lisp.net/project/clfswm/ http://common-lisp.net/project/clfswm/ http://treewm.sourceforge.net/ http://treewm.sourceforge.net/
known 12y ago
Does it have weather applet?
known 12y ago
Removing LXQT installation is a PITA if you don't like it. http://askubuntu.com/questions/164941/why-removing-gnome-core-does-not-remove-all-of-its-dependencies/164952#164952 http://askubuntu.com/questions/164941/why-removing-gnome-cor...

150 points by abaschin 12y ago

uncletaco 12y ago

So would that acronym be pronounced "looks cute"?

VogonWorkEthic 12y ago
It should be, well played.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

ChuckMcM 12y ago

Not trying to be a problem here, but what problem does this solve? Why does someone undertake to make a new desktop environment? Is XFce/Kde/gnome/cinammon/what-have-you not enough?

jiggy2011 12y ago
This seems to be an evolution of LXDE which has been around for a while and is the default desktop on the raspberry pi for example. As for why the switch the Qt, I'm guessing it's because the next version of Unity/Ubuntu will be Qt based so this will be more compatible with that.
cwyers 12y ago
Well, this is a merger of two of the what-have-yous, LXDE-Qt and Razor-Qt. So it actually reduces the number of desktop environments in the wild, by one.
jamesaguilar 12y ago
LXDE is a lot faster than any of those, at least on my dev machine. I would recommend you give it a try. The difference was noticeable with Eclipse+Jumpshot+a full compilation of my project (a surprisingly common trio of things that I do).
chongli 12y ago
I'd guess the main idea is to try and create a comfortable environment for new users migrating from Windows. Personally, I'm glad to be done with overlapping windows and graphical file browsers. I use Xmonad, urxvt and bash.
Shamanmuni 12y ago
Problem 1: you have a slightly old machine (512MB or 1GB of RAM) or something like a Raspberry Pi and you want a resource-efficient but modern-looking desktop. Problem 2: you want a VM with a DE but don't want to spend too much resources in it. Problem 3: you have a modern computer but prefer to have a lightweight DE and let the rest of the resources be used by your applications. Both LXDE and Razor-qt consumed about 100MB of RAM, I would expect something similar from LXQt. All the other DEs are heavier, XFCE is just a bit heavier but at least for me LXQt looks a lot nicer. And as it was pointed out, it's a merger of LXDE and Razor-qt, so it's the complete opposite of the "many Gnomes" situation. Kudos to that.
- rrmm 12y ago
  another usecase I've encountered is a single system hosting multiple users running persistent desktops remotely via x2go or tigervnc.
- ChuckMcM 12y ago
  Ok, thanks for that list. I pretty much had 'xfce' as the solution there but can see the user model of Qt being a good component swap. I'll certainly build a VM with it to try it out, but my concern is that unless it gets some sort of traction it will just sort of fizzle out as folks graduate and move on to other jobs.
  - jnbiche 12y ago
    I doubt it. LXDE has been around for quite a while. It was already established when I started using it 5-6 years ago. I've been using Mate (on Mint) happily, but I'll definitely give this a try on one of my laptops.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - pekk 12y ago
    They are both relatively slow, so it was reasonable to mention them both in the context of something which is useful for machines that are relatively slow.
mhitza 12y ago
I don't like Gnome3 or KDE. I just need a bottom panel. I'm already used with configuring Openbox, LXDE is just a layer on top of that. If LXDE wouldn't exist, I would just use XFCE.
- noisy_boy 12y ago
  Having used Fluxbox, Windowmaker, KDE, Gnome and Cinnamon, I find XFCE's start menu design the most productive. Recently used items appear on the top and you can start typing and the menu items start filtering - this happens for some other DEs as well but XFCE's matching is truely outstanding. I'm able to get to any item in less than 2 seconds (obviously I've assigned keyboard shortcuts to frequently used items) - very satisfying.
venomsnake 12y ago
My "eyebrow dismissal" comment seeing the title was "can we at least focus on current gen". But after reading this seems like a normal evolution of a well received project. And Qt seems like is here to stay. So probably not bad decision from technical point of view too. It was nice when I used it.
zokier 12y ago
I think Razor-Qt was created partially as a reaction to KDE4 launch which was less than stellar, bit similar to the Cinnamon vs Gnome3 situation. LXDE on the other hand was specifically crafted for low-end systems. It's homepage says that it has been tested on PentiumII/266 with 192MB of RAM among others. LXQt is the new merger of the two projects.
detrino 12y ago
I think there is a huge opportunity for a traditional, lightweight desktop that uses Qt. Both the Gnome and KDE camps have alienated large parts of their userbase during the KDE4/Gnome3 transition. I personally find both to be less usable than their predecessors. That leaves projects like Xfce/Mate to fill the gap. The problem with these environments is that they use GTK2, which is bitrotting. Migrating to GTK3 is risky in that it has essentially become the Gnome toolkit. It's version number and releases are synced with gnome and it regularly breaks old code and themes as well as bending to Gnome's UI vision. If LXQT can build something like a modern Gnome2 or KDE3 I could see them claiming a lot of happy users.
- fsiefken 12y ago
  the modern gnome2 already exists as 'gnome3 classic mode' or mate (which will support gtk3). lxde is also nice.
  - mdellabitta 12y ago
    This essentially IS LXDE.. That project's developers merged with another team to work on this. LXDE's going to be maintained for a while, but I imagine it won't get as much attention anymore.
  - detrino 12y ago
    Gnome3 classic mode is mostly just Gnome3 + some extensions. The user interface is only superficially similar to Gnome2. Most things feel crippled compared to what came before it and it loses functionality on every release. Mate is excellent and truly deserving of the title "modern Gnome2". It's my desktop of choice. Under the hood it's using a lot of Gnome3 tech while the user interface is familiar and usable for desktop users. The problem remains, however, that it is stuck with either a languishing GTK2 or at the mercy of Gnome with GTK3.
    - airtonix 12y ago
      crippled, interesting. Perhaps you'd like to explain further?
steele 12y ago
Well, this website isn't called Pragmatist News. Intellectual curiosity? Unhappy with existing OSes? Fun? Not a fan of a specific license? These are just guesses of course.

higherpurpose 12y ago

Please make the new LXQt prettier and more modern, too. I wish I would use LXDE/Lubuntu on older machines, but it's just so ugly I can't stand it. I think the next best thing for people like me right now is the MATE environment for Linux Mint, but it does use a bit more resources than LXDE, too.

jamesaguilar 12y ago
Depending on what you mean by "prettier," that would kind of defeat the purpose of LXDE.
- Debilski 12y ago
  For starters, they could try to get the spacing in and between UI elements right. For example, the text in drop down menus looks pretty misaligned in those screenshots.
  - pjbrunet 12y ago
    That's the first thing I noticed on their homepage, the spacing looks off to me too. It's a matter of balancing tension between visual events, not something you learn in high school art class ;-) On the other hand, I'm usually on a laptop and want to cram as much information as possible into a small space. I love how Gmail has cozy, comfortable and compact modes!
orkoden 12y ago
Every time I try LXDE I switch back to XFCE. XFCE is a lot more rounded and integrated. LXDE always feels just like a hodge podge collection of tools, that don't really work together.
gerbal 12y ago
Modern features tend to mean fancy-3d-compositing-features which are not lightweight. I do think the default LXDE theme looks rather windows 2000/Gnome 2.6. However, changing the theme is not hard and LXDE can use any XFCE themes. Hopefully the new LXQt preserves that compatibility.

yarrel 12y ago

"Qt" and "Lightweight" do not go together.

jamesgeck0 12y ago
Really? Qt used to be quite a bit snappier than GTK+. Is this no longer the case?
- mhitza 12y ago
  > OK, back to what most user will concern, the resource usage. > To be honest, migrating to Qt will cause mild elevation of memory usage compared to the old Gtk+ 2 version. Don’t jump to the conclusion too soon. Migrating to gtk+ 3 also causes similar increase of resource usage. http://blog.lxde.org/?p=1013 http://blog.lxde.org/?p=1013
Zardoz84 12y ago
You are wrong. 1) QT works better when you not have accelerated drives (ie SVGA driver in X11) 2) The time in Nokia, QT was optimized to run in a mobile !! So must they tuned it to be more lightweight.

stephen 12y ago

Interesting; I didn't realize LXQt was the next-gen LXDE vs. just being a fork/sibling. I'm currently using Lubuntu which is Ubuntu+LXDE but then with Xmonad as a window manager and really enjoying it.

harrystone 12y ago

I wonder if this will finally replace WindowMaker on my desktops. Don't laugh, it works.

hderms 12y ago
I remember WindowMaker impressing the hell out of me about a decade ago. Used it for a good while until I migrated to Gnome.
dredmorbius 12y ago
WindowMaker representin'! It totally does: fast, stable, restartable (kill -USR1 <pid>), lightweight, stays out of the way, easily configurable, portable config files, and a very, very, very consistent UI over the past 17 years that I've been using it (nearly a decade of which it saw virtually no dev activity and, frankly, didn't need it -- updates have started trickling in again). Thing is, after nearly two decades, it's solidly ingrained into my desktop use habits. And while I try alternatives from time to time, they always leave me running screaming back to good old wmaker.

cgh 12y ago

Some years back, I worked with Qt 3.x and quite liked it. A pure Qt desktop would be interesting but I've never used LXDE. How does it compare to Openbox, which is what I use via Crunchbang? I realise Openbox is "just" a window manager so I'd like to know what additional benefits LXDE offers.

gerbal 12y ago
LXDE uses openbox as its window manager. So it's openbox with a more robust ecosystem build around it.
pjbrunet 12y ago
I'm a Crunchbanger too. Nobody can say Crunchbang looks like Windows95, just browse the forums and see what people are doing with it http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewforum.php?id=6 http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewforum.php?id=6 You might find some useful info regarding Crunchbang/LXDE here http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=24640 http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=24640 Part of the appeal for me as an artist and hacker, the Crunchbang community is incredibly creative. You can see the personality and careful attention going into the screenshots. Any pixel on the screen is fair game for customization. In my opinion, it's worth the effort to tweak your config files and get exactly the look you want. For me it's a balance between functionality, getting the most from my laptop's small screen, while creating a pleasant work environment that I don't despise. FWIW I still use Openbox but disabled the decorations. I use pytyle2 to manage windows. Pretty much I use the Crunchbang default colors, dark but not too dark, works well at night as well as in daylight.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

zobzu 12y ago

hmm I use KDE (latest) with indexing disabled, akonadi disabled, 3d desktop effects disabled it seems very similar to LXQt and the project it replaces when it comes to resource usage and useability, except it is more mature and support a few more things. Thats basically what keeps me on KDE. I would think KDE should disable akonadi and stuff by default personally - its super useable without all the heavy weight "crap". Alt-F2, konsole and kwin basically are the reasons I use it. Here's an example, too: I can tile my windows on any desktop i want with kwin without sacrificing non-tiling windows. I can even mix tiling and non-tiling. I dont have to remember 20 shortcuts for this, it works with the mouse too. Basically, its seamless. (Thats also why I use it over awesomewm for example)

Zancarius 12y ago
> I would think KDE should disable akonadi and stuff by default personally - its super useable without all the heavy weight "crap". I agree. Unfortunately, they replaced Nepomuk with Baloo in 4.13 (I think; Baloo seems more aggressive than the former) and have effectively taken the stance that users cannot (easily) disable it [1]. It's somewhat infuriating, because adding your home to the ignore list doesn't appear to work as advertised and it'll happily index everything including /var (bug?), NFS mounts, and anything it gets its grubby mitts on. The only solution I found that works is here [2] because there's no longer a UI to disable it (unlike Nepomuk). Beyond that, you're absolutely right: With all the cruft disabled, KDE is quite nice (long time user here as well). That said, I'm happy with KDE, and I enjoy it in part because of the eye candy (probably a poor excuse). I've used LXDE on an old laptop before but there are always features that I seem to miss. Otherwise, it's great for users looking to avoid the cruft or have limited resources. LXQt brings some of the clean appearance of modern KDE with it, so that's a definite plus. It makes me eager to take it a spin, then possibly try it out on that old laptop--which doesn't play nicely with KDE no matter what's disabled. [1] http://vhanda.in/blog/2014/04/desktop-search-configuration/ http://vhanda.in/blog/2014/04/desktop-search-configuration/ [2] https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1390267#p1390267 https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1390267#p1390267
- m_ram 12y ago

WoodenChair 12y ago

The lightweight Linux desktop environments have been battling for years now over who's Windows 95 clone is better. It's a nice paradigm because it's familiar to many users and serves its purpose. However, does low resource usage necessarily imply lack of innovation regarding user experience? Or does familiarity in this space just trump other concerns and experimentation should be left to the fat environments like Gnome, Unity, and KDE?

coleifer 12y ago
Sounds like another satisfied Apple customer.
ANTSANTS 12y ago
I think it's worth noting that there's never been a "weird" WM/DE that attracted a sizeable userbase purely on its own merits. Gnome 3 and Unity were to a great extent forced upon their users. If there were real benefits to means of desktop interaction that differed significantly from the established "Windows 95" and "tiling WM" modes, you'd think there'd be a few enthusiasts on the side exploring this realm and touting its productivity advantages. I'd bet the majority of the lightweight "Windows 95 clone" WMs and DEs exist because GNOME and (to a lesser extent) KDE alienated their userbases by trying to be "different" and "next generation" (mostly by poorly cloning OSX and the latest Windows version that nobody liked anyway), so I'd hesitate to say that experimentation should be left to them. EDIT: Many commercial products suffer from this problem where the existing version is "good enough" and people are happy using it for several hours a day, but the producer needs to convince users to purchase the new version anyway, so they end up adding a lot of pointless, irritating, and even product-breaking changes just to make the new version seem revolutionary and worthy of an upgrade, even if it's actually making the product worse. Many open source devs don't seem to have realized that there is no reason for them to play this game. They don't need to sell anyone a new version in a cardboard box, so there's no conflict of interest here; they can do less work and make their users more happy by keeping things stable and incrementally improving things. Yet, very often, they ape Microsoft, Adobe, and company's spastic thrashing anyway. More ribbons!
- 12y ago

watersb 12y ago

Qt runs fairly lightweight on top of the native BCM compositor of the Raspberry Pi. [1] I wonder how this LXQt might compare to Maynard [2] resource usage. [1] http://youtu.be/0j-Wakm5B84 http://youtu.be/0j-Wakm5B84 [2] http://www.raspberrypi.org/preview-the-upcoming-maynard-desktop/ http://www.raspberrypi.org/preview-the-upcoming-maynard-desk...

listic 12y ago

How does this version differ from what's in Lubuntu 14.04?

stevenwagner 12y ago

All these comments are good and all, but only Chromebooks and Ubuntu have brought forward a instant user friendly experience for users who don't want to Google around to get things working properly by default.

andrewstuart 12y ago

How come these things never look refined and polished? Always sort of half nice and Unix-clunk.

scythe 12y ago
Personally I think it's the goddamn panel; I've never seen a Linux panel that looks as nice as its counterparts on Windows and OS X. It seems like a small component, but it really "frames" the whole desktop environment -- like a drumbeat -- and in both OS X and Windows there are some complicated gradients in the panel that I'm almost certain were insisted on by some tweed-clad hipster with a title half a sentence long; to my eye it really does make a difference. The windows actually look really nice, especially considering it's the default skin.
- andrewstuart 12y ago
  Unix desktops always seem to have weird inconsistent margins and fonts that somehow don't look right. Just doesn't feel nice.
- kijin 12y ago
  It takes a professional designer (or rather, a dozen of them) to produce a professional-looking desktop theme. Which is exactly what the majority of FOSS projects lack. When you let a programmer dictate the design, you end up with a lot of features and a lot of misaligned margins. In my experience, many programmers just don't care about pixel-perfect designs. Yes, I'm talking about the same group of people who scoff at typography because "the content is the only thing that matters", blah blah blah. Admittedly, I have no data to back this up, but I have a gut feeling that lightweight desktop environments are particularly teeming with this "function before form" crowd. When you treat design as a second-class citizen of your project, it's no wonder you can't attract good designers to work with you. On the other hand, when you let a designer dictate the design, you end up with perfectly aligned margins and anti-aliased corners, but all the features and configuration options you care about are hidden behind five clicks and a keyboard shortcut, or worse, removed entirely because they somehow violate the designer's philosophy :(

mrmondo 12y ago

Wow blast from the past, it looks awfully like something out of the early / mid 90s

CrazedGeek 12y ago
For some of us, that's all we want.

noisy_boy 12y ago

I'm using XFCE and Cinnamon on my Linux Mint 16. Can anybody comment if they think installing LXQt (via the PPA) could break my existing DEs? I really want to give this a try as I like to try out different DEs.

dredmorbius 12y ago

I more or less completely dislike change in my desktop environment. That said, I think there's room for some innovation, particularly simplification, in the Linux space. And if this creates a usable alternative for people, so much the better. The first principle of GUIs is that there's been very little real innovation since the first demos at Xerox PARC at the Mother of All Demos 46 years ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos). And there's been little reason for it. Once people understand how to interact with the basics of their interface, there's little gain, and a lot of cost, to changing things. Most computer interaction is textual. Some isn't. Supporting text, formatted text, images, video, and sound is pretty much the entire scope of what needs to be done. The best interfaces haven't changed much. Apple's Aqua interface is hardly changed from its introduction in 2000 -- that's 14 years. Some visual elements have been modestly restyled, and virtual desktop support added. That's pretty much it. Other attempts to push radical UI changes on users have been dramatic failures, whether from Microsoft or Linux. Windows 7 was an absolute flop, and I'm among those who've been massively disappointed and frustrated by the GNOME 3 and KDE 4 transitions. While neither is my primary desktop, I do interact with them occasionally, and with apps designed for them more frequently. The experiences have been disappointing and frustrating, to say the least, as well as the attitude shown toward users by the development teams (Linus Torvald's outburst to GNOME was pretty much on point). The place to experiment, IMO, is precisely where LXQT is: in an experimental space, away from the mainstream. If the desktop does prove useful, people will tend to migrate toward it, as has happened with the xfce desktop: not as featureful as GNOME or KDE, but vastly less frustrating and more useful (I also try it from time to time). My own home? WindowMaker, which I've used for 17 years. I know it, it knows me, we work well together, and I see no reason to change.

sliverstorm 12y ago
Did you mean to say Windows 8? I think Windows 7 is doing just fine, and the UI didn't really deviate from before.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  My error then. I'd checked and thought Metro was associated with Win 7. I've used Windows so rarely in the past decade I'm not familiar with the specifics of which UI goes with which release. Though now that I think about it, I've seen Win 7 and it's more similar to the Win XP interface.

Lunatic666 12y ago

What about making a new Desktop not only fast, but also pretty? All the Linux Desktops look butt-ugly compared to OS X or even Windows 8 and absolutely don't make we want to give it a try. A nicely designed Desktop which is also fast and uses less resources would help getting Linux on the Desktops so much more...

exDM69 12y ago
> What about making a new Desktop not only fast, but also pretty? The reason for this is that there are relatively few graphics artists who use Linux desktops and contribute to the desktop projects by creating graphics. But there are quite pretty custom desktop themes created by people. You can look at /r/unixporn for example. Most of the screenshots there are from the tiling wm (dwm/awesome/xmonad/i3) crowd but every now and then someone posts some pretty Gnome/KDE/LXDE/Xfce screenies and themes as well.
JohnDoe365 12y ago
The reason is that there is no central steering to define the workflows of Apps and how and when UI elements should be used and how. That's why QT is used extensively in KDE, as it brings a lot of UI elements by default to alleviate this lack of steering.
airtonix 12y ago
Personally I feel that Gnome Shell is far more appealing than Windows (anything) or MacOsx. I just showed a MacOSx user the alt-drag window resizing.... totally blew his mind, as in he couldn't understand why that wasn't a feature of MacOSx: "The Simple Operating System"

hyperion2010 12y ago

So I have been using fluxbox for 7 years now and it does nearly everything I need. There is one feature that I have been looking for that I have not seen in any window manager that I know: the ability to group windows so that they raise and lower together. Yes I have virtual desktops, but I really, really want to be able to link the terminal window I use to test a file I am editing, to the vim window where I am editing said file. Does anyone know of a window manager that can group windows so that they raise together? Or perhaps something more like: 'when I raise this window also raise these windows.' Obviously you need a bit more logic to deal with the ordering of windows within a raise group, but this seems like a feature that is completely missing from all current window managers.

Pxtl 12y ago
Honestly, I've always wanted a window-manager that mimicked Visual Studio's pin/dock slide-outs. That is, you can dock any task to any edge of the screen, and each edge can be sub-divided into panes. Each pane has multiple tabs, and each pane can be set to auto-hide or can be "pinned" to always-visible, which causes everything else to resize. It's a rather complicated approach, but I've never found any better multi-tool layout, since it's enormously Fitt's-law-friendly while allowing me to both hide everything or bring in oodles of tool panes quickly and easily as needed.
- XorNot 12y ago
  Cinnamon is slowly moving in that direction I'd say. It has the ability to snap a window to the edge and have the dynamic-desktop size shrink to accomodate it (i.e. hitting maximize will only use the remaining unsnapped space). I suspect it could be extended to use this to start setting up tiles automatically.
- Zecc 12y ago
  I haven't tried them (just found out about them now), and I know it's not exactly what you're looking for, but there are WMs that allow you to have nesting virtual workspaces. It could be an approximation. http://common-lisp.net/project/clfswm/ http://common-lisp.net/project/clfswm/ http://treewm.sourceforge.net/ http://treewm.sourceforge.net/

known 12y ago

Does it have weather applet?

known 12y ago

Removing LXQT installation is a PITA if you don't like it. http://askubuntu.com/questions/164941/why-removing-gnome-core-does-not-remove-all-of-its-dependencies/164952#164952 http://askubuntu.com/questions/164941/why-removing-gnome-cor...