If something stands out about Linux systems, it is being able to find distributions for any type of equipment, both the latest generation and limited power. In the end, it’s not all about having a pretty appearance, full of effects, shadows and round corners, but sometimes performance and usability are more important than this appearance. And since what most influences performance is usually the graphical environment, the desktop, there are developers who have created their own interfaces giving more importance to performance. And one of them is LXQt .
LXQt is one of the fastest Linux desktops, faster than GNOME, KDE, and even XFCE. This is specially designed to run without problems on all types of computers with limited resources, low-end equipment or very old computers.
The new version 0.17 of this desktop is not as big an update as 0.16 was, a couple of months ago. However, we can find some changes and some interesting news as we will see below.
What’s new in LXQt 0.17
The first of the novelties that we find in this desktop is that, from now on, the desktop closes all secondary processes when closing the session . In this way we avoid that non-LXQt applications can save session data, as well as save us errors and problems.
The file browser on this desktop, PCManFM , also has some new features and fixes. The most relevant is the one that allows us to see the creation time of the files when using the details view. Another interesting change is that in the “tools” menu of the explorer we will find a new option that will allow us to open a new tab, with administrator permissions, thanks to GVFS , without having to invoke root. Blurry thumbnail problems when previewing many files are finally history.
Other changes to highlight in this new version of the desktop are:
- Possibility of creating launchers or shortcuts from the tools menu.
- LXQt Power Manager now allows us to switch between battery and current.
- LXQt Panel (the taskbar) can be automatically hidden by placing a window next to it.
- LXImage Qt: Image viewer can now resize window based on image size. Thumbnail options have also been moved.
- LXQt Archiver now remembers window settings, and also supports ISO images.
Of course, various bugs detected in the previous version have also been corrected.
How to test the new lightweight desktop
As we have seen, although it is not one of the biggest updates, it is a major update. If we want to test the novelties of this desktop, we can download it and install it in our distribution easily, without problems, from the official repositories. For example, to test it in Ubuntu we would simply have to execute:
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y sudo apt install lxqt openbox -y sudo reboot
If our distro is Rolling Release (like Arch, or Manjaro) the new version of the desktop will already be available through a normal update. If not, we will have to force its installation from the repository, or wait for those responsible to launch it through one more update.
Also, there are many distros that come with this desktop pre-installed. For example, if we install Lubuntu, Fedora (LXQt edition), Arch , Manjaro or Void Linux, we can enjoy LXQt. Of course, we must make sure that the desktop is updated, because otherwise we will be using an older version and we will not be able to enjoy the news that we have just seen.