After six months of development, the developers of the LXQt desktop environment announced the release of version 2.3.0 in a blog post . This version includes significant improvements focused on enhancing Wayland compatibility, optimizing overall performance, and modernizing the user experience.
This environment, known for its lightness and efficiency, continues to evolve to offer a modern alternative to heavier desktops, while maintaining its minimalist and low-power philosophy.
Main new features of LXQt 2.3.0
Version 2.3.0 continues to improve Wayland compatibility through the lxqt-wayland-session component, now equipped with the lxqt-qdbus driver. This new driver allows commands to be executed more universally and efficiently, regardless of the graphical compositor used. Thanks to this improvement, LXQt can run seamlessly in compositors such as LabWC, Wayfire, KWin-Wayland, Sway, Hyprland, River, and Niri.
The LXQt panel has also been redesigned to take advantage of the ext-workspaces-v1 protocol, enabling seamless management of virtual desktops in Wayland. Furthermore, Wayfire is gaining prominence by becoming the second compositor with the highest level of compatibility with the panel, after KWin-Wayland.
The custom command has become more flexible, supporting structured output and updating automatically with each new command. Advanced users may find a much wider range of uses for it and be able to share their work with others. Among the most notable new features are drag-and-drop activation of the "Show Desktop" plugin, mouse wheel brightness adjustment, and menu organization that adapts to the user's regional settings.
Improved tools and utilities
The PCManFM-Qt file manager introduces new features such as the "Safely Extract" option from the context menu and the ability to disable file descriptions on the desktop. It also fixes a bug that occurred when mounting the application after closing a tab and adds a workaround for the GLib issue when moving one directory over another. These small but valuable improvements contribute to a cleaner and more controlled user experience.
Meanwhile, the ScreenGrab capture tool expands its compatibility with Wayland compositors that support the wlr_screencopy protocol, also improving the selection border color in X11 environments.
The QTerminal terminal emulator and QTermWidget now support emojis and flags , along with a new contextual option to enable or disable bookmarks. These improvements aim for a more expressive and modern experience, especially for developers and advanced users.
Additionally, the LXQt power manager adds the ability to turn off the monitor in Wayland environments, compatible with compositors such as KWin, Niri, and Hyprland. Regarding the LXQt Archiver, support for the LZ4 compression algorithm has been introduced, the handling of incorrect passwords with 7z has been corrected, the status indicators for delete and view actions have been enabled and configured correctly, and the issue of reverting to the root directory after adding or deleting a file has been fixed. It also includes various fixes that improve stability when handling password-protected files.
Other changes:
- The initial configuration file is available outside of LXQt to avoid an empty panel.
- The regional settings are adapted to the ordering used in the Main Menu and the Advanced Menu.
Other minor improvements and corrections. - The removal of shortcut items with multi-screen configurations in Wayland has been corrected.
- An imminent crash was avoided after removing a Wayland screen.
- An option to disable file tool suggestions on the desktop has been added.
- The display of the "&" symbol in the recent files menu has been corrected.
- The bookmarks action was added to the view context menu.
- Clang's warnings were silenced
A new community space
At the project level, LXQt is launching a new wiki site with an improved search system and a more modern interface. The content of the previous wiki has been preserved to maintain historical documentation, while the classic domain lxqt.org has returned, redirecting to the new portal.
Finally, if you are interested in learning more, you can find the details at the following link.
Download and get LXQt 2.3.0
For those interested in trying LXQt 2.3.0, this new version is now available through the official channels of major distributions, and the source code for compilation is also available.