LXQt 1.2 Desktop Environment Released with Initial Wayland Support, Various Improvements

LXQt 1.2

The LXQt Project released today LXQt 1.2 as the latest stable version of this Qt-based lightweight desktop environment derived from the obsolete LXDE desktop environment project.

LXQt 1.2 is here about seven months after LXQt 1.1 and it’s a major update to the lightweight desktop environment that introduces initial support for the Wayland display server in an attempt to keep up with the times and the new technologies most GNU/Linux distributions are adopting these days.

Still based on the long-term supported Qt 5.15 LTS open-source application framework, LXQt 1.2 also improves its file manager component with a new search history feature that offers separate lists for name and content searches. Users can search the maximum number of history items in Preferences > Advanced > Search.

LXQt’s file manager now also offers easier file selection in the Detailed List mode by dragging the mouse cursor inside non-name columns. In addition, it’s now possible to deselect items with the Ctrl+D shortcut.

Furthermore, the file manager now features a “Categories” entry and a “What’s-This” help item in the launcher creating dialog, new options for locale-awareness and zero-padding, support for customizing margins of the desktop workspace, as well as the ability to remember the result of execution prompts with multiple files.

The QTerminal terminal emulator has been improved as well in this release to allow the use of QTermWidget as a Qt plugin and to provide better command parsing via the -e option. Moreover, QTerminal now comes with Bidi rendering enabled by default and text DND now follows the settings for newline trimming and multiline prompts.

LXQt 1.2 also improves the LXQt Panel component by adding context menu items to Quick Launch for reloading desktop entries and fixing Quick Launch icons to appear when there are multiple configuration files.

Other than that, the LXQt Power Management component was updated to consider the stable state of batteries in laptops, the ScreenGrab screenshot utility now works in multi-screen setups, and the LXImage Qt image viewer now features a sorting sub-menu in the View menu and better scaling of images.

Of course, there are also various bug fixes to improve past issues like the correct position for LXQt Runner with some window managers, an old issue about showing correct icons of newly installed apps, the priorities of desktop-directories folders, and other annoyances that haunted previous releases.

Check out the GitHub release notes for extra technical details on the changes included in LXQt 1.2, a version that should be available in the stable software repositories of your favorite GNU/Linux distribution in the coming weeks.

Last updated 1 year ago

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