LXQt 0.8.0 Is Out! Review + Workarounds

LXQt 0.8.0 has just been released (yesterday) and it brings performance improvements, new features, bugfixes and more with it. Here’s what you get. LXQt is the Qt port and the upcoming version of LXDE, the Lightweight Desktop Environment. It is a lightweight, modular, blazing-fast and user-friendly desktop environment, brought by the joint efforts of both LXDE

Updated Mar 18, 2016Reviews
LXQt 0.8

LXQt is the Qt port and the upcoming version of LXDE, the Lightweight Desktop Environment. It is a lightweight, modular, blazing-fast and user-friendly desktop environment, brought by the joint efforts of both LXDE and Razor-Qt projects.

In this version you’ll find many improvements, including some new features and plenty of bug fixes. Following is a list of the most notable changes.

LXQt 0.8 Feature Highlights

  • Full Qt 5 support
  • New component: lxqt-admin – brings an optional set of basic admin tools
  • New themes – Plasma Next and Dark Alpha
  • pcmanfm-qt improvements – support for single-click to activate items, support for drag & drop on the desktop, and more…
  • lxqt-panel improvements – support for reordering of taskbar buttons, and more…
  • Integrate with compton if available (disabled by default)
  • Lots of performances improvements
  • Lots and lots of bugfixes

Certainly, a decent list of changes that justify an upgrade you might say, however, as it turns out the road for upgrading is not that simple (yet).

Upgrading / Installing LXQt 0.8

In case you feel an itch to go and give LXQt 0.8 a try, you might encounter a few obstacles along the way, as I did. Nonetheless, here’s how to overcome some of them and reach a working state of the DE.

After installing LXQt 0.8 on both Ubuntu and Arch separately, I’ve come to the conclusion that although version 0.8 was announced as stable – some bugs, or perhaps inadequate maintenance will be present and may hinder your experience.

Hence, I’ll elaborate on how to install LXQt 0.8 on Ubuntu (Archers, I expect you to handle this on your own), however the workaround suggestions will be targeting both. Here it goes:

Open up Ubuntu Software Centre > click on Edit from the top bar menu > and select Software Sources.

Next switch to Other Software tab > and click Add button to the bottom left of the window. Enter ppa:lubuntu-dev/lubuntu-daily and click Add Source.

On latest versions of Ubuntu this should prompt you to update (repository) database automatically and you should accept.

Yet just in case, in order to do it manually, simply open terminal and type: sudo apt-get update

Now, you may use Terminal or Software Center, whichever you feel comfortable with, and install the package lxqt-metapackage. This will install all of the necessary dependencies as well.

Logout and upon login back, after typing your password click on the Ubuntu symbol next to your user in order to choose LXQt-desktop from the list. Now login.

 Switch User lightdm