Qt 6.0 Beta Released For This Big Toolkit Update

It was just two weeks ago that the Qt 6.0 Alpha released, but in aiming to get the release back on schedule, the beta is already shipping today.

Qt 6.0 Alpha had been running about one month behind schedule but in aiming to get Qt 6.0.0 out the door before Christmas, the Qt 6.0 beta was expedited and managing to come just two weeks after the alpha and putting it rightly in line with their mid-October target.

Qt 6 drops Qt Script, temporarily removes Qt Multimedia/Bluetooth/Virtual-Keyboard modules until later Qt6 releases, introduces a major overhaul to their graphics architecture to better support Vulkan and other modern graphics APIs like Metal and Direct3D 12, various other 3D improvements, next-generation QML, various tooling improvements, updated host/platform support, and more.

Going from Qt5 to Qt6 should mean much less breakage and changes compared to the prior Qt4 to Qt5 transition. Qt 6 adoption though likely won't tick up until well into 2021 or even 2022 with the first long-term support release not being until Qt 6.2 LTS and due to time/resource constraints several modules not being ported in time for Qt 6.0 but coming later.

More details on today's Qt 6.0 Beta via Qt.io.