Lubuntu 24.04 LTS Aiming For Optional Wayland Session, Default in 24.10

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Lubuntu 24.04 LTS Aiming For Optional Wayland Session, Default in 24.10

Lubuntu as the Ubuntu Linux spin featuring the lightweight LXQt desktop has shared some of their plans for the upcoming Lubuntu 24.04 LTS release. As part of this release due out in April they are aiming to have an optional Wayland session in place although they don't expect to make it the default until Lubuntu 24.10...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Lubuntu-24.04-LTS-Plans

[Space Beer]

I like this project. Have been using it for some time on an old netbook, it's simple, lightweight and useful, just like OS should be

[skeevy420]

I like this project. Have been using it for some time on an old netbook, it's simple, lightweight and useful, just like OS should be

I used to feel that way about XFCE and XFCE-based distributions until I started seeing default install resource usage comparisons. Once I started seeing KDE always being within 50-100mb of memory usage of all the other lightweight desktops tested is when I switched to KDE. It was one of those light bulb moments where I redefined what I did and didn't consider to be lightweight and made me question the sanity of making such a non-standard desktop. It's not like beautiful women were gonna be walking by my PC and get turned on by my RAM savings.

That's not a jab at Lubuntu or anything else. Your comment just made me reminiscent about the "good ole days" of GTK 2->3 and Qt 4->5 when I used to care about those things and when I had that light bulb moment which made me wonder, "Since graphics toolkits are are going GTK 4->5 and Qt 5->6, X is being replaced with Wayland, ALSA to Pulse to Pipe, with all that change, what is and isn't lightweight these days?"

[mrg666]

I used to feel that way about XFCE and XFCE-based distributions until I started seeing default install resource usage comparisons. Once I started seeing KDE always being within 50-100mb of memory usage of all the other lightweight desktops tested is when I switched to KDE. It was one of those light bulb moments where I redefined what I did and didn't consider to be lightweight and made me question the sanity of making such a non-standard desktop. It's not like beautiful women were gonna be walking by my PC and get turned on by my RAM savings.

That's not a jab at Lubuntu or anything else. Your comment just made me reminiscent about the "good ole days" of GTK 2->3 and Qt 4->5 when I used to care about those things and when I had that light bulb moment which made me wonder, "Since graphics toolkits are are going GTK 4->5 and Qt 5->6, X is being replaced with Wayland, ALSA to Pulse to Pipe, with all that change, what is and isn't lightweight these days?"

I switched to XFCE after KDE4 released for a while. It was fine. 2-3 years after that I read an article about Plasma 5 and decided to give it a shot again. I agree with you. It was such a pleasant surprise to see how nimble and snappy Plasma 5 was. I am curious to see LXQT though.

[guglovich]

The clowns didn't end at the circus.

[rafanelli]

Once I started seeing KDE always being within 50-100mb of memory usage of all the other lightweight desktops tested is when I switched to KDE.

That was me. XFCE was taking about the same resources as a slightly tuned KDE install. Then why bother? XFCE is not bad by any means, it was just very bare bones compared to KDE. I got the idea that the resource usage was because it uses some GNOME tech, like GTK (I know that bit stated off as a Gimp thing). The conclusion I drew was that Qt built stuff simply is easier on the resources. And so I got interested in LXQt. I expect Wayland to eventually be easier resources than X.org, as the latter comes with a lot of baggage. I found myself that currently these two are roughly on par currently.

Now I'm usually not on the market for a low resources desktop, though I think GNOME is certainly on the heavy side (if not the heaviest). But sometimes I am, and I think Linux has an edge for less powerful and older hardware. For this I think LXQt+Wayland will prove to be the best-in-town solution.

[archkde]

Does anyone know here what compositor they plan to use? I don't see anything in the announcement. Maybe KWin or Mir?

[Estranged1906]

LXQT, LXDE, Xfce, MATE, Cinnamon, Budgie, Unity, COSMIC, Enlightenment, Bodhi, CDE, NSCDE, thousands of window managers, ...

Do we really need more than KDE Plasma (for the general user), GNOME (for the Red Had employees), and IceWM (for ancient machines)?

[rafanelli]

LXQT, LXDE, Xfce, MATE, Cinnamon, Budgie, Unity, COSMIC, Enlightenment, Bodhi, CDE, NSCDE, thousands of window managers, ...

Choice is great! And you are free to choose your poison (unlike with Windows or macOS). (BTW you are missing a lot of really cool tiling compositors that run on Wayland)

Do we really need more than KDE Plasma (for the general user), GNOME (for the Red Had employees), and IceWM (for ancient machines)?

Probably not to you and me. But all these projects are maintained by people that should think otherwise.

There's one thing: you are outdated wrt IceWM. We all know that XFCE is not as resource friendly as claimed. But LXQt is the resource friendly and user friendly pick nowadays. So having good Wayland support for LXQt is a big deal, as Wayland (besides being the future) has the potential to reduce resource usage even further. See some Reddit comments on this topic here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/y51yns/informal_benchmark_of_cli_gnome_kde_plasma_xfce/

https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/17i9019/what_is_the_fastest_and_lightest_desktop/

[Alexmitter]

Do we really need more than KDE Plasma (for the general user)

And then people wonder why people who tried Linux think it sucks. If KDE was my first experience of Linux, I would think "what the hell is this cheap and buggy windows shell clone" and be back to Windows in an instant. The "General User" more then ever now wants something that is not the Windows 95 UX with a modernish look.