LXQt 2.0 Screenshot
This 2024 will undoubtedly be the year of Wayland, Since as we have mentioned in other articles that we have shared here on the blog in relation to the transition of applications, environments and distributions towards Wayland, this graphical server will have a great boom throughout this year.
And despite the fact that the movement towards Wayland has started several years ago, it seems that the pieces are only just aligning in favor of Wayland and on this occasion, the project that has been added in favor of Wayland is the LXQt desktop environment.
The LXQt developers unveiled iinformation about your plans to transition the environment to Wayland and QT6. This decision came after an internal discussion (in a good way) and after thinking about the matter a lot, they came to the conclusion that the future of the project was directed towards the transition of the Qt6 library and the Wayland protocol.
It is important to highlight that the implementation of support for Wayland will not alter the structure conceptual of the project, since as such LXQt will remain modular and maintain its focus in classic desk organization. Following the analogy with support for multiple window managers, LXQt will be able to work with all composite managers library based wlroots, developed by the creators of the user environment Sway. This library provides basic functions for organizing the work of Wayland-based composite managers. LXQt has been successfully tested using composite managers such as labwc, wayfire, kwin_wayland, sway y Hyprland, obtaining the best results with labwc.
Among the main points to address In the transition it is mentioned:
- Priority: Porting all components to Qt6, whereby Qt6 is expected to offer performance improvements, although they will not necessarily be evident to the end user.
- New default app menu that will include “All Apps,” favorites, and an improved search function.
- It will be implemented in LXQt 2.0.0, although it is not directly related to the port to Qt6.
Currently, the migration of all components from LXQt to Qt6 is considered the main task and receives maximum attention of the project. Once the migration is complete, support for Qt5 will be discontinued. It is mentioned that so far, panel, desktop, file manager (PCmanFM-qt), image viewer (LXimage-qt), permission management system (PolicyKit), volume control (pavucontrol, PulseAudio Volume Control) and the global keyboard shortcut manager have now been fully translated to Qt6.
ERegarding the work with Wayland in LXQt, it is mentioned that:
- Work is underway on porting LXQt to Wayland, implementing Wayland-specific code in components such as the dashboard, desktop, launcher, hotkeys, and notification daemon.
- Many LXQt applications and components already work on Wayland, although some only partially.
- The lack of release of Layer-Shell-qt 6.0 and a task manager plugin in the Wayland dashboard are pending challenges.
- LXQt's modular philosophy will continue with Wayland, and is expected to work with all wlroots-based composers, such as labwc, wayfire, kwin_wayland, sway, and Hyprland.
- Transitioning to Qt6 and adapting to Wayland are ongoing processes that require time and patience.
In terms of preparation for Wayland, most LXQt components mentioned above they have already been ported to some extent. Wayland support is not yet available only in the display configurator, screenshot program, and global keyboard shortcut manager. There are no plans to port the sudo framework to Wayland.
Finally, it should be mentioned that The results of this migration are expected to be presented in the launch of LXQt 2.0.0, scheduled for April this year. In addition to the internal changes, the new version will include by default a new application menu called "Fancy Menu", which not only organizes applications by categories, but also introduces a summary display mode for all applications and adds a list of frequently used applications.
If you are interested in knowing more about it, you can check the details In the following link.