LXQt is a free, open-source, lightweight, and user-friendly desktop environment built using the Qt libraries. Users looking for extreme performance in a desktop environment should consider LXQt. It is an excellent choice if you require a low-resource, nearly fully-featured desktop environment.
The LXQt desktop environment consists of many small individual components like a panel program, session manager, hotkey daemon, and more. It was formed as a merger between the LXDE and Razor-Qt desktop environments. Here’s the project’s website.
And now, the LXQt project has announced the release of LXQt 1.1. The following section briefly explains the most visible changes in the LXQt 1.1 release.
LXQt 1.1 Desktop Environment Highlights
We start with the fact that LXQt 1.1 is based on Qt 5.15, the last LTS version of the Qt 5 application development framework. Although Qt 6.0 is already available, Qt 5.x brings significant performance improvements and makes developing user interfaces in Qt easier.
The file manager in LXQt now supports the file manager DBus interface, which is used by some apps, such as Firefox and Chromium, that calls the default file manager to show files inside folders or perform other tasks.
In addition, the “Recent Files” option has been added to the File menu. While this doesn’t seem like a significant change, it certainly adds value and convenience to your everyday desktop experience.
But more importantly, users of the desktop environment now can easily and quickly navigate from the File Manager directly to the appropriate directory in the terminal via the newly added option “Open in Terminal” in the folder context menu when right-clicking.
Of course, the most visible part of any desktop environment is always how it looks and its theme. So we immediately focus on the fact that LXQt 1.1 comes with updated and newly added themes.
In addition, several new wallpapers have also been added. On top of that, matching Qt palettes are also added for a more consistent look and feel with Qt widget styles like Fusion.
They can be found, applied, and used under the “LXQt Settings” -> “Appearance” -> “Widget Style” -> “Qt Palette” settings.
Let’s now move on to the LXQt panel, where there are also a few things to note. First, when the System Tray plugin is enabled, legacy tray icons now appear inside Status Notifier. Next, in LXQt 1.1, the names of desktops are displayed in the context menus of task buttons, making working with multiple desktops clearer and more convenient.
Furthermore, the conflict between the main menu shortcut and the built-in shortcuts of the search entry has been resolved. At the same time, button labels and Directory Menu style options have also been added.
Last but not least, let’s look at the QTerminal terminal emulator and its changes because, as you know, the terminal is one of the places where we spend a significant part of our time working with Linux. Some tasks are just still best accomplished via the command line.
The QTerminal bookmark functionality has been greatly enhanced. There is also an example bookmarks file included. In addition, a shortcut entry for the drop-down shortcut is added, and issues with closing the last tab with a prompt are resolved.
Apart from those mentioned above, some additional changes also deserve to be noted here.
- The default theme in LXQt 1.1 is now Clearlooks, and the default icon theme is Breeze.
- LXQt Power Management adds three tray icons with the charge percentage inside them. So, now, the built-in tray icon can be circular or shaped like a battery.
- LXQt 1.1 Session Settings now include a simple option for global screen scaling.
- Appearance Configuration now includes a page dedicated to GTK style settings.
- LXQt Panel now splits panel config dialog into three sections for having a sleeker GUI.
Of course, there are also numerous other improvements and many bug fixes across the entire LXQt 1.1 Desktop Environment.
At the moment of writing this release announcement, LXQt 1.1 is available for installation for users of some rolling release distros like Arch Linux. So Arch users can install LXQt 1.1 through the Pacman package manager.
Other users will have to wait until the latest version of this desktop environment is available in the official software repos of their distributions.
Source downloads and more information about the LXQt 1.1 changes can be found on the project’s GitHub page.
