The developers behind the LXQt desktop environment, known for its lightness, have unveiled significant updates planned for the upcoming LXQt 2.1 release, including an eagerly anticipated Wayland session.
The most notable addition in LXQt 2.1 is the introduction of an experimental Wayland session, enabled by the new lxqt-wayland-session package. This session will support various well-known Wayland compositors such as Hyprland, KWin, Labwc, Niri, River, Sway, and Wayfire.
The experimental status of the new Wayland session means it does not yet support several standard LXQt features like global shortcuts and monitor settings. This also affects the compatibility with applications strictly dependent on X11, including Redshift and certain clipboard managers.
“Currently there are 3 dedicated panel backends, xcb (X11), general wlroots, and kwin_wayland – with kwin_wayland supporting several features like moving windows to workspaces, workspace switcher, urgency hints, and showing the desktop. Other backends can be created and added in the future, enabling similar features for other compositors,” said the devs in a blog post.
In addition to the experimental Wayland session, the upcoming LXQt 2.1 release will bring several styling enhancements, including automatic palette color adjustment when themes change, toolbar icon sizing options, and desktop tooltip color styling via palette integration.
The LXQt 2.1 update will enhance user interface elements like the text and icons in QTerminal’s “Split terminal” menu, include a search feature for executables in Fancy Menu, and add functionality for managing “Do not disturb” settings directly from the notification tray icon. It will also remember past window dimensions in monitor settings.
Alongside these improvements, the release will address numerous bugs, contributing to a more stable and reliable LXQt desktop environment. The final release of LXQt 2.1 is scheduled for mid-November 2024, assuming all developments proceed as planned.
Last updated 11 hours ago