LXQt 0.13.0 released

The LXQt team has announced the release of LXQt 0.13.0, the latest stable release of the lightweight desktop environment built with Qt frameworks. This release is a footstep towards upcoming 1.0.0 release.

A preview of LXQt 0.10.0

The main highlights of LXQt 0.13.0 release can be summarized as:

• All packages are ready for Qt 5.11.
• Out-of-source-builds are now mandatory.
• libfm-qt is made more self-sufficient and less dependent on libfm, resulting in better performance and more flexibility.
• qps and screengrab have been moved to the LXQt umbrella.
• Improved overall translations.
• Made menu-cached optional (default=off) in panel and runner to prevent memory leaks and to avoid problems when restarting or shutting down LXQt.
• Improved LXQtCompilerSettings.
• Our (upstream) configuration defaults were moved to /usr/share/lxqt, distribution’s overrides can be placed into /etc/lxqt

For more details, read LXQt 0.13.0 release announcement, release notes and our gallery page for LXQt desktop environment.

Manjaro 17.0.2 MATE & LXQt community editions released

Manjaro community developers has announced release of Manjaro 17.0.2 MATE & LXQt editions. The MATE edition of Manjaro provides a traditional looking, yet elegant and modern desktop experience. While Manjaro LXQt edition, features lightweight, yet fully functional LXQt desktop environment which is a good choice for netbooks and old computers.

Manjaro 17.0.2 MATE Desktop

Manjaro 17.0.2 MATE edition ships with MATE Desktop 1.18.x with full GTK3 support. It also includes updated version of Brisk Menu, a modern application menu developed by Solus project in collaboration with other mate communities. Another highlight in this release is adoption of slick greeter as default lightdm greeter. It will provide more compact, slick look for the lightdm greeter.

Netinstalelr on Manjaro LXQt 17.0.2

Manjaro 17.0.2 LXQt edition has a wider user base comparing to MATE edition (statement based on download/day from sourceforge website). This release makes use of Netinstall to provide users with the option to choose the required packages while installation.

For more information on these releases, see original release announcement and separate forum threads for MATE & LXQt editions.

Lubuntu 17.10 Artful Aardvark Alpha 1 released, an experimental LXQt image is also available

Lubuntu team has announced availability of Lubuntu 17.10 Alpha 1 for testing. This pre-release of Lubuntu will give a glimpse of upcoming stable release scheduled to release on October 2017.

Lubuntu 17.10 Alpha 1 ships LXDE as default desktop environment. Also, there is one experimental version of Lubuntu featuring LXQt desktop. It is not recommended to LXQt variation as it is highly possible to break.

Being a development release, Lubuntu 17.10 Alpha 1 is not free from bugs and a list of known bugs are available in official release notes. If you find any bugs other that listed in release notes, you can help Lubuntu by reporting it through proper channels.

Lubuntu Artful Aardvark Alpha 1 (soon to be 17.10) has been released! Also in this release (in addition to the usual LXDE ISO) is an experimental image with LXQt instead of LXDE.

We recommend that if you install Lubuntu Artful Aardvark Alpha 1, that you download the LXDE edition rather than the experimental LXQt ISO. The LXQt ISO will most likely break your system.

For more details see release announcement and separate release notes for LXDE and LXQt variations.

Download Lubuntu 17.10 Alpha 1

64 BIT | 32 BIT

Download Lubuntu Next (LXQt)

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ROSA Fresh R9 LXQt released; It can smoothly work with 512 MB of RAM

The ROSA Lab team has announced availability of ROSA Fresh R9 LXQt, a new member in ROSA GNU/Linux family. This flavor of ROSA Fresh is based on R9 (2016.1) series and features elegant LXQt desktop environment. ROSA Fresh LXQt is most lightweight release from the project so far and can work smoothly even on a system having 512 MB of RAM.

Courtesy : ROSA Lab

Some of the key highlights of ROSA Fresh R9 LXQt release are :

• All LXQt components are based on the freshest 0.11 branch with simplified ROSA theme, without compositing and desktop effects.
• For this edition, we use NewMoon (PaleMoon) web browser. Being compatible with Firefox ESR (which is used as a basis), it consumes significantly less resources.
• Default installation includes some additional components for Internet users - pidgin, qBitTorrent, trojita.
• By default, nomacs image viewer is installed (which also provides basic image manipulation facilities)
• Rosa Media Player and Audacious players are included, as well.

You can also read release announcement and release notes published by ROSA Lab.

Download ROSA Fresh R9 LXQt

• 64bit ISO (md5sum: fba5177ca40469322d5466e02f231f50) 
• 32bit ISO (md5sum: 9b856d906bdf7f87e02250fa00e793e1)

Manjaro 16.10 LXQt edition released with LXQt 0.11

Mr Bernhard Landauer of Manjaro LXQt community has announced release of Manjaro 16.10 LXQt edition, latest stable snapshot of rolling GNU/Linux distribution featuring lightweight, modern and efficient LXQt desktop.

Manjaro LXQt 16.10 features recently released LXQt 0.11 which brings improved user experience by fixing various bugs reported in previous releases. Over this LXQt desktop, Manjaro community has done reasonable amount of customizations to make it more usable and appealing for end users.

CREDIT : Manjaro LXQt community

Being a Manjaro based distribution, Manjaro LXQt edition integrates core packages maintained by Manjaro team with community maintained LXQt packages. Current release of LXQt edition includes only essential software packages so that, users can install their choice of packages.

The 32 bit installation image of Manjaro LXQt 16.10 is around 750 MB in size. While, the 64 bit image includes non-free driver packages and it has more than 1 GB size.

Some of the packages shipped with this snapshot includes:

• kernel 4.8.5-2
• sddm and sddm-config-editor (git)
• firefox 49, hexchat, transmission-qt
• lxterminal, juffed
• chroot (with nvme support), gparted, octopi, xsensors, lxtask
• mpv, alsa + qasmixer (32) or pulseaudio + pavucontrol-qt (64), smplayer(64)
• kcalc, plank, qlipper (git), xarchiver, qpdfview
• infinality smoothing
• yaourt and base-devel, git

You may also read release announcement published in Manjaro blog and forums.


Download Manjaro 16.10 LXQt edition
64 BIT | 32 BIT

Comparing memory usage of LXQt Desktop with LXDE, Xfce and others

It is often told that, Qt is a bloated framework and anything that make use of it will be bloated and will require considerable amount of memory. But a study conducted by LXDE/LXQt team shows this is not a valid statement and comparing to the benefits offered by Qt it does not consume much memory.

What is LXQt Desktop

LXQt is a lightweight and user friendly desktop environment built using Qt frameworks. The motive behind LXQt project is to provide a familiar user experience without consuming too much of the system resources. It is a new branch of LXDE, another lightweight desktop environment.

Memory comparison

A survey conducted by LXQt team claims that, the memory usage of LXQt desktop is less than all other desktop environments which provides similar or better user experience. It is almost comparable with memory usage of LXDE, with a lot of added features.

source : LXDE blog

You can find more details on this survey in  a blog post published in LXDE blog.

LXQt 0.11 released after almost one year

The LXQt team has announced release of LXQt 0.11, latest stable release of lightweight desktop environment that makes use of well established Qt framework. LXQt project is an attempt to rewrite LXDE desktop using Qt framework instead of Gtk+.

The LXQt 0.11, current release of project is coming almost one year after previous stable release, LXQt 0.11 due to various reasons. However the team promises that, the release process is revised thoroughly so that, newer versions can be shipped frequently to provide frequent bug fixes and feature enhancements. Also, relevant bug fixes will be ported to previous releases, if it is necessary.

The major highlights of LXQt 0.11 release can be summarized as:

• Improved documentation to make more clarity on process to be followed while development, installation and configuration. Each repository in comes with a README.md file.
• Numerous UI related bugs were fixed to enhance user experience. Some new components were introduced and some changes regarding configuration were made.
• Under Openbox an LXQt specific configuration file ~/.config/openbox/lxqt-rc.xml is used from now on. 
• Repository lxqt-config was complemented with a tool to adjust the displays’ brightness.  
• lxqt-panel, the taskbar of LXQt, is now behaving well on multi-monitor systems. The main menu comes with a search feature. Its plugin-screensaver was providing the very same functionality as an invocation lxqt-leave --lockscreen (see lxqt-session). The latter is made available as item “Lock Screen” in the panel’s main menu by a desktop entry file and can as such be dragged into an instance of plugin-quicklaunch. The plugin was therefore abandoned, to ease the transition, preexisting instances are automatically replaced by an instance of plugin-quicklaunch featuring the said desktop entry file.  
• PCManFM-Qt, the file manager of LXQt which is in charge of the desktop management as well, has seen a lot of improvement of its UI, e. g. the placement of icons is much better and it’s possible to store settings per folder. 
• The release is introducing pavucontrol-Qt, the Qt port of PulseAudio’s mixer pavucontrol the UI of which is based upon GTK. Albeit developed for a short time only it’s already providing nearly all features of the latter.

For more information, see release announcement published in projects website.

Manjaro LXQt 16.05 Ice released, again with a new look

The Manjaro LXQt community has unveiled Manjaro LXQt 16.05, latest monthly maintenance release of Manjaro community edition featuring Qt5 based, lightweight LXQt as default desktop environment. This release will be known by the code name 'Ice' and similar to previous releases, this release is also coming with a brand new look.

source : Manjaro Forums

Following are important packages included in this release:

• kernel 4.4.10 LTS, Manjaro settings manager, sddm, plymouth, octopi, compton, plank (64 bits)
• pcmanfm-qt, gimp, lximage-qt
• firefox(64) or otter-browser(32), hexchat, transmission-qt
• abiword, qpdfview, gnumeric(64), leafpad
• mpv, smplayer(mpv based), clementine qt5. 32 -> qastools, 64 -> pulseaudio and pavucontrol
• gparted, qisousb, lxtask, xsensors
• multilib enabled (64)
• ffmpegthumbnailer
• capture tool + key Print Screen configured for taking screenshots (also with Alt or Shift)
• xscreensaver (64)
• nonfree drivers (64)

For additional information, see release announcement published in Manjaro forums.

Download Manjaro LXQt 16.05

32 BIT | 64 BIT

Manjaro LXQt Dark 16.04 released with a new dark theme

The Manjaro LXQt community announced release of Manjaro LXQt Dark 16.04, successor for Manjaro LXQt 16.04 released at the beginning of April. Main attraction of Manjaro LXQt Dark edition is a dark theme named Kwantum which is supposed to reduce eye strain while using computer.

Following are some notable highlights of this release:

• kernel 4.4.8 LTS, Manjaro-settings-manager, sddm, plymouth, octopi, compton, plank, redshift
• pcmanfm-qt, gimp, lximage-qt
• firefox, hexchat, transmission-qt
• abiword, qpdfview, gnumeric(64), juffed (advanced text editor)
• mpv, smplayer(mpv based), clementine qt5. qastools (32bit), pulseaudio and pavucontrol (64bit)
• gparted, qisousb, lxtask, xsensors
• multilib enabled (64bit)
• ffmpegthumbnailer (for video preview)
• capture tool + key Print Screen configured for taking screenshots (also with Alt or Shift)
• xscreensaver (64bit) or i3lock (32bit)
• proprietary drivers (64bit)

For more information, see original release announcement and forum post for this release.

Download Manjaro LXQt Dark 16.04

32 BIT | 64 BIT

Manjaro LXQt 16.04 Screenshots

Screenshots of Manjaro LXQt 16.04 announced on 4th April 2016. Manjaro LXQt is a community edition of Manjaro Linux featuring lightweight LXQt as default desktop environment.

Welcome Screen

Initial configuration menu

Boot screen

Login Screen

Manjaro 16.04 LXQt Desktop - Initial impression

Main Menu

PCManFM File manager

LXTerminal

Mozilla Firefox

Octopi package manager

Configuration Center

Leave Options

Shutdown confirmation

See Also.

• Manjaro LXQt 16.03 Screenshots