The LXQt team announces the release of LXQt 2.1.0, the Lightweight Qt Desktop Environment.

Highlights

General

• Through its new component lxqt-wayland-session, LXQt 2.1.0 supports 7 Wayland sessions (with Labwc, KWin, Wayfire, Hyprland, Sway, River and Niri), has two Wayland back-ends in lxqt-panel (one for kwin_wayland and the other general), and will add more later. All LXQt components that are not limited to X11 — i.e., most components — work fine on Wayland. The sessions are available in the new section Wayland Settings inside LXQt Session Settings. At least one supported Wayland compositor should be installed in addition to lxqt-wayland-session for it to be used.

There is still hard work to do, but all of the current LXQt Wayland sessions are quite usable; their differences are about what the supported Wayland compositors provide:

• Labwc provides the most stable session, is very lightweight, neat and configurable, and has an extremely helpful and responsive team.
• Perhaps the most complete Wayland session is provided by KWin when extra KDE packages are installed. For now, it is the only Wayland compositor that supports LXQt Panel's desktop switcher and LXQt Power Manager's settings for turning off the monitor (see the Wayland Wiki for the latter).
• Those who like fancy effects can use Wayfire or Hyprland (KWin also has various effects). And so on.

Anyway, the best result is achieved by installing the latest stable version of the chosen Wayland compositor.

Wayland users need to be familiar with Wayland counterparts of some X11 tools. They may use X11 apps through XWayland, but using apps that work directly on Wayland is the best choice. Also, see the Wayland Wiki.

• Of course, the X11 session will be supported indefinitely. Wayland is optional and rather experimental.

LibFM-Qt / PCManFM-Qt

In addition to several fixes and enhancements,

• Separate multi-screen desktops are used under Wayland.
• The desktop supports translucency under Wayland (for using external wallpaper apps).
• Relative paths are allowed for customized folder icons.
• Paths can be entered in the name entry of LXQt file dialog.
• Thumbnails can be disabled on remote file systems.

LXQt Panel

Now LXQt Panel's task-bar works on Wayland. Also, the desktop switcher works under kwin_wayland. Two Wayland back-ends are added: one for kwin_wayland, the other for compositors that are compatible with wlroots (but not necessarily based on it). The suitable back-end is activated automatically for the Wayland session that is chosen in the new section of LXQt Sessions Settings.

Also, in addition to fixes and workarounds,

• Fancy Menu filtering works with exec name.
• Horizontal wheel scrolling works with Custom Command.
• An option is added for reversing the order of tray items.
• Closing of menu with "Meta" shortcut is fixed in Main Menu and Fancy Menu.
• The problems related to Alsa in the volume plugin are fixed.

LXQt Wayland Session

This is a new component that allows choosing a Wayland LXQt session in LXQt Session Settings. It supports Labwc, KWin, Wayfire, Hyprland, Sway, River and Niri. It adds "LXQt (Wayland)" to the items of your desktop display manager (e.g., SDDM). If you want to use it, make sure to choose a Wayland compositor from the drop-down menu of LXQt Session Settings → Wayland Settings → Wayland compositor. Optionally, a supported Wayland screenlocker command may also be selected if available.

LXQt Session

In addition to a GUI element for custom screenlocker on x11, an experimental section is added to LXQt Session Settings for choosing a Wayland compositor and screen locker. That section will appear when the new LXQt component lxqt-wayland-session is installed. At least one supported Wayland compositor should be installed for it to work.

Also, a tooltip is added to Global Screen Scaling to tell users that they should not use it under Wayland (no disaster, but scaling would be inconsistent). Instead, screen scaling should be adjusted in the compositor's settings or via kanshi.

Some fixes and enhancements are made too.

Configuration Center

The app is made compatible with Wayland in various ways. Also, besides several fixes,

• More informative tooltips are shown in Configuration Center.
• Tooltip colors, a check-box for using the palette provided by LXQt theme, and an option for changing the size of toolbar icons are added to LXQt Appearance Configuration.

QTerminal

• Previously, if settings were changed while other instances of QTerminal were running, conflicts would arise. That is fixed now.
• A hint on drop-down shortcut is added for Wayland.
• More user-friendly texts are used for the split menu-items.

And a few other fixes.

Release Notes

Please see the release page of each LXQt component for its release note.