The Current Happenings Within LXQt As Of Summer 2018

Hong Jen Yee, the developer of the PCMan File Manager that has long served as the default file manager on the LXDE desktop environment, presented at this week's Debian DebConf 18 event about the LXDE/LXQt desktop efforts.

By now most of you know that the current focus when it comes to the lightweight Linux desktop is around LXQt as a collaboration between the LXDE and Razor-qt efforts. LXQt continues targeting the Qt5 tool-kit while using the same lightweight design principles of LXDE. LXQt also makes use of some KDE Frameworks / libraries, still leverages Glib/GVFS/GIO, can work with any window manager, and does support QtXdg.

Besides code sharing with KDE, LXQt does also re-use the "good parts" from GTK+ programs like GNOME File Roller, the Openbox configuration tool, and PulseAudio mixer.

Among the challenges though for LXQt recently have been various Qt5 X11 bugs, look and feel issues particularly when mixing GTK/Qt, etc.

Among the future LXQt project goals are Wayland support, which is currently being worked on. They also have future work items around user experience improvements, remaining lightweight, introducing new applications, and other enhancements.

It's also worth noting that LXDE is still being maintained by at least one developer and the GTK3 support appears done.

Those wishing to watch Hong Jen Yee's LXDE/LXQt presentation in full from DebConf 18 can find it embedded below.