LXQt
In early 2013, Hong Jen Yee "PCMan" started porting LXDE components to Qt. The first preview of LXDE-Qt was released on July 3rd, 2013. On July 21st, it was announced that Razor-qt (a desktop similar in design to LXDE) and LXDE were merging.
The result is LXQt, a desktop built on Qt which partly uses Razor-qt and LXDE components. While development is mainly focused on LXQt, the GTK 2 version of LXDE will see continued development.
Installation
First, Install and configure xorg. Then, install the lxqt group and an icon theme (e.g. breeze-icons or oxygen-icons).
For additional functionality, you may wish to install the following:
- LXQt Connman applet — LXQt system-tray applet for ConnMan.
- nm-trayAUR or nm-tray-gitAUR A Qt based frontend for NetworkManager
- SDDM — The recommended display manager for LXQt.
- A screen locker, if needed. For example, slock or XScreenSaver. Both are confirmed to integrate with LXQt, others may too. If you want to disable screen locking upon suspend/sleep it is under LXQt > Preferences > LXQt Settings > Session Settings > Lock screen before suspending/hibernating checkbox. Tip: LXQt uses xdg-screensaver from xdg-utils for screen locking which only works with XScreenSaver and xautolock in LXQt session. You can use it or another screen locker by itself. For example, with slock you can follow Slock#Lock on suspend as well as install patched xdg-utils-slockAUR to obtain feelings expected by LXQt
- You can now edit
~/.config/lxqt/lxqt.confand add your screen-locker of choice, no need for xautolock anymore, for example to use i3lock add the following
[Screensaver] lock_command=i3lock
- Also for screen locking you can use light-locker if you are using lightdm as your display manager
- For audio support, see General recommendations#Sound system.
- Some LXQt panel plugins require extra packages to function, check the optional dependencies for lxqt-panel.
Starting the desktop
Using xinit
Append the following line to Xinitrc:
~/.xinitrc
exec startlxqt
Graphical login
Choose LXQt Desktop from the menu in a display manager of choice.
Configuration
LXQt in general tries to provide GUI applications to change its settings. Configuration files are in ~/.config/lxqt. This directory is initialized automatically. The default configuration for new users is found in /etc/xdg/lxqt.
Screen Brightness
If you find that LXQt uses screen contrast control instead of screen brightness control for the screen brightness keyboard shortcuts, you can change the command to use xbacklight instead under the LXQt configuration center > shortcut keys
xbacklight -inc 10 xbacklight -dec 10
If you are using the Intel kernel modesetting driver xbacklight will not work, but you can use the following command instead
pkexec lxqt-backlight_backend --inc pkexec lxqt-backlight_backend --dec
You may need to create two scripts for screen brightness up and down and point the keyboard shortcut to the path of the scripts for it to work.
Another way to change screen brightness is to use brightnessctl
brightnessctl -d intel_backlight set +5% brightnessctl -d intel_backlight set 5%-
Panel widgets
If you cannot add the CPU and System Statistics widgets to the panel, make sure libstatgrab and libsysstat are installed.
Use a different window manager
While Openbox is the default window manager for LXQt, you can specify a different window manager to use with LXQt via Session Settings, lxqt-config-session; or by editing ~/.config/lxqt/session.conf. Change the following line:
window_manager=openbox
to a window manager of choice:
window_manager=your_window_manager
Autostart
To have X applications start on login, click the main menu from the LXQt > Preferences > LXQt Settings > Session Settings. Alternatively, this can be launched with:
$ lxqt-config-session
From this window, click on AutoStart on the left side. Here you can add a new application to either the global autostart (launched in all sessions implementing the XDG Autostart specification) or your local autostart (labelled LXQt Autostart) (See issue 746 for a bug related to this option). For each item you add, lxqt-config-session will create a Desktop entry (.desktop file) in the appropriate XDG Autostart directory.
The distinction between "Global Autostart" and "LXQt Autostart" does not depend on the directory in which the corresponding .desktop file is located, but rather on the OnlyShowIn setting. If it is OnlyShowIn=true, it is considered an "LXQt Autostart". Furthermore, if X-LXQt-Module=true, the item is not shown in lxqt-config-session.
Set-up environment variables
Environment variables for LXQt session can be defined in Session Settings.
Editing the Application Menu
It is possible to edit menu entries by editing their .desktop files stored in /usr/share/applications/lxqt-*.desktop files. See Desktop entries.
Tips and tricks
Screen Compositor
You can add a compositor like picom to autostart applications with a command like the following
picom --vsync -r 12 --no-fading-openclose -b
Customizing Leave
One can customize the options available under Leave simply by copying the respective package provide .desktop file to ~/.local/share/applications and modifying it to contain the NoDisplay=true directive. Reference: #876.
Complete list of files to consider masking include:
lxqt-hibernate.desktop lxqt-leave.desktop lxqt-lockscreen.desktop lxqt-logout.desktop lxqt-reboot.desktop lxqt-shutdown.desktop lxqt-suspend.desktop
Example: remove hibernate option.
$ mkdir -p ~/.local/share/applications $ sed '/OnlyShowIn/aNoDisplay=true' </usr/share/applications/lxqt-hibernate.desktop >~/.local/share/applications/lxqt-hibernate.desktop
Troubleshooting
Desktop icons are grouped together
When moving icons on the desktop it is possible to place them a bit too close to each other making them connected. If unable to separate them Stop Desktop from Session Settings, remove ~/.config/pcmanfm-qt/lxqt/desktop-items-0.conf and Start Desktop again.
Run LXQt with xrdp
Running LXQt with xrdp for remote login has the benefit of being fast and convenient, while minimizing resource consumption on the server. Setting up xrdp is rather painless, and only requires a user to adjust the ~/.xinitrc. Since LXQt appears to rely on some D-Bus service functionality, that file should have the following line at the end [1]:
exec dbus-run-session -- startlxqt