LXQt For Linux

LXQt is an open source and totally free desktop environment for the GNU/Linux platform. It is the next generation of the LXDE and Razor-qt projects, providing users with a traditional, lightweight, yet modern graphical environment designed to replace the aforementioned DEs.

The idea of porting LXDE (Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment), which uses the old GTK2 toolkit, to the Qt framework has been heavily discussed in the past few months, simply because it couldn't be ported to the buggy and bloated GTK3.

During the same period of time, the development team behind the lightweight Razor-qt desktop environment were also considering a collaboration between the LXDE and Razor-qt project, which took place in July 2013.

Previously known as LXDE-Qt, the LXQt desktop environment is now stable and can be used in production machines, officially supported on the Arch Linux, Ubuntu, openSUSE and Siduction operating systems.

Being an open source project, its source packages can be easily downloaded from the project's homepage. However, the best way to install this fast, user-friendly and modular desktop environment in your Linux distribution is to use the packages provided on the default software repositories.

LXQt comprises of the PCManFM file manager and desktop icon manager, a session manager, tools for managing removable devices, an application switcher, a Qt port of the Openbox configuration tool, a Control Center, global keyboard shortcuts, PolicyKit agent, power management, and command runner.

The main goal of the LXQt project is to provide users with a blazing-fast and classic desktop environment that features a modern look and feel. Now that it is based on the award winning Qt GUI toolkit, it'll be developed for years to come without worrying that it will get old and deprecated.

Starting with June 2014, numerous LXDE- and Razor-qt-based Linux distributions will use the LXQt project as their default desktop environment.