Lubuntu 18.10 Officially Switching From LXDE To LXQt

[Nth_man]

Qt is used in Automotive/IoT industries and is most definitely lightweight because it includes everything needed to get the job done without needing outside dependencies.

It reminded me of Qt Lite project — Qt for any platform, any thing, any size:
- https://blog.basyskom.com/2017/qt-lite/
- http://blog.qt.io/blog/2017/05/31/qt-lite-qt-5-9-lts/
- http://blog.qt.io/blog/2016/08/18/in...hing-any-size/

[grok]

LxQT uses a bit more resources but still pretty lightweight.

Lubuntu 18.04 uses ~ 220MB (LXDE)
Lubuntu daily uses ~ 290MB (LxQT)

I think that's a lot, does this include disk cache? Or simply the sum of having 64bit software, pulseaudio, network-manager, whatever is called Ubuntu's update manager, and maybe some background thing I'm missing.
By the way I'm not doing an anti network-manager etc. diatribe, in fact Lubuntu is great if you need these things. Firefox forces our hand regarding pulseaudio, this is regrettable. But if the low-RAM system you need low footprint for has 2GB RAM, that's not a big problem, I do want pulseaudio and network manager anyhow, where a more raw system is clearly better is with 128-512MB RAM such as Raspberry Pi or some solid as rock desktop based on i440 BX.

I'm partial to the GTK version of LXDE : for the looks, saving a couple tens MB RAM, and it's better bug fixed and maintained yet with minor new features sometimes.
LXQt has the potential to support dpi other than 100% which is all that might matter with things like 1080p 13" laptops and the like! I think it's no better for now. But it may pay off by the time we're nearing Lubuntu 20.04, and there's a nice encouragement and exposure to end users in this decision.

Pcmanfm is a great very fine piece of software, I wish to say that yet another time. Fast Nautilus clone with no dependencies (that also has an "application folder", which you won't need unless you don't have an application launcher or start menu). So you can use it with fluxbox or any raw window manager of your choice.

[patstew]

If Qt is good enough for fucking microcontrollers without a GPU, it's good enough for a desktop (https://blog.qt.io/blog/2018/05/03/q...ntrollers-mcu/)

I was about to post the same thing. That's Qt running on a 180MHz cortex M4 with 16MB of RAM. It's probably worse than any desktop computer built in the last 2 decades. And it's running the Javascript + QML Qt Quick stuff that people believe is even more 'bloated' than Qt Widgets.

[doom_Oo7]

Qt is anything but lightweight.

If Qt is good enough for fucking microcontrollers without a GPU, it's good enough for a desktop (https://blog.qt.io/blog/2018/05/03/q...ntrollers-mcu/)

[ThanosApostolou]

Don't worry guys, qt apps written in c++ are always better than apps written in python gtk and apps that emulate gtk behavior (firefox/chrome). Also, from my experience, having both qt and gtk apps adds almost zero overhead comparing to having only one toolkit installed.

I don't use Lubuntu, but I might take advantage of LXQt's modularity and try a gtk-qt combo for my next setup. I am a bit disappointed from the full-featured desktop environments which seem to take serious time from my laptop's battery without offering much in return. So, I'm thinking something like LXQt with nemo instead of pcmanfm-qt (I prefer it over KDE's dolphin because of gvfs vs kio) and kwin instead of openbox (maybe the devs should switch to kwin by default too, because openbox is really old and unmaintained).

[Steffo]

Well, the point of LXDE and Lubuntu is being lightweight. Qt is anything but lightweight.

We use Qt in our embedded products for years...

All the applications I use run on GTK toolkit - Firefox, Thunderbird, Libreoffice suite, JRE, etc. I don't see much reason to use QT based desktop, especially if you are running on a low end PC. I don't think this move to QT by LXDE is a good one. I am pretty sure Raspbian will stick to their version of LXDE.

If you're running low end PC it's a big reason to switch to Qt. As far as I noticed if you run more Qt applications at once their memory footprint should be lower than gtk equivalents. Furthermore, Gnome 3 uses about twice as much memory as KDE: 480 MB vs 1.2 GB.

[sverris]

Well, the point of LXDE and Lubuntu is being lightweight. Qt is anything but lightweight.

https://blog.lxde.org/2016/10/04/benchmark-memory-usage-lxqt-desktop-environment-vs-xfce/

So should be still quite lightweight...

[calc]

Well, the point of LXDE and Lubuntu is being lightweight. Qt is anything but lightweight.

LxQT uses a bit more resources but still pretty lightweight.

Lubuntu 18.04 uses ~ 220MB (LXDE)
Lubuntu daily uses ~ 290MB (LxQT)

[CTown]

Since SVG and CSS are both scriptable, could not a program be made to convert a Kvantum theme to GTK theme or vice-versa? However, with amazing themes like Breeze, Nota, and Ark having versions for both toolkits, I don't think it's worth the effort. Still, that wouldn't solve the difference between the Gnome and KDE design styles (human interface guidelines). To add to that, even if both projects adopted the same style, there wouldn't be a guarantee that developers would follow that style.

T.l.d.r.: So, it's probably never going to happen...