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 Q

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.