I guess this is my day to try out a few different desktops. It's been a few years since I've tried LXQt, I thought I would take a look at the current version. LXQt has a reputation for being the lightest desktop environment. In many cases even lighter than IceWM. I put this on a VM, but instead of the usual 8GB or 4GB of RAM, I'm trying this in 2GB. I didn't install this, I'm just running from the "Live" iso to get a feel for it.
It starts off with a fairly standard desktop. As mentioned in another review, I'm not a fan of the Fedora 42 background, but it is what it is.
This seems to run OK in 2GB. At least so far. LXQt is based on the Qt-toolkit. This is the lightest desktop I have run recently. Of course it's obviously much lighter than Gnome or KDE, but it also uses less resources than MATE, Cinnamon, or LXDE. It was slighty higher than Anti X (until started the browser).
The menu's take a bit to get used to. They're not bad, just backwards to what I'm used to. The application list should be of the left, not on the right side.
But you get used to it.
I don't know if it's because I was in a VM, and it didn't see a wi-fi interface, But I didn't see anyway to configure wi-fi in the system settings. Maybe I need to download something for that to work.
I confess, I do like the floating windows, I can move them wherever I like and resize them. The terminal windows was fairly snappy, even in 2GB.
LXQt uses a browser called Falkon. You dont hear much about it. At first I thought maybe it only ran under LXQt but there is a KDE version, in fact it seems Falkon was written by the KDE team. This is a very light browser. It runs fairly well in 2GB. It mentioned earlier LXGt can be lighter than Anti X running IceWm. This is one of those cases. The browser is the secret. People install a low resource distro light "DamnSmall or "Anti X", and then they run a hog browser like Chrome or Firefox. I notice Falkon has a "duckduckgo" search bar built in. I may have to check into this browser alittle more in another review.
Ha... anyone remember Xscreensaver? Here is a version that works under wayland. Although admittedly it was missing a lot of the modules.
I also notice that falkon has a built-in ad-blocker. I didn't install any add-ons or modules, I got this message out of the box.
The file browser works as expected. I will say after a while, the "Drop application icons" message in the bottom left corner becomes a little annoying. I was tempted to install something and drag an icon there just so it would go away.
All in all, for a low resource desktop, I like it. I have an old AMD Phenom system (2GB) I may try to install this on later. I am told Kaos and OpenMandrive LX use falkon as the default browser as well. Who knew? Anyway, there's not a lot more to add. Everything works as expected.
It's certainly not as full featured as other desktops, but it is definitely low resource.
It starts off with a fairly standard desktop. As mentioned in another review, I'm not a fan of the Fedora 42 background, but it is what it is.
This seems to run OK in 2GB. At least so far. LXQt is based on the Qt-toolkit. This is the lightest desktop I have run recently. Of course it's obviously much lighter than Gnome or KDE, but it also uses less resources than MATE, Cinnamon, or LXDE. It was slighty higher than Anti X (until started the browser).
The menu's take a bit to get used to. They're not bad, just backwards to what I'm used to. The application list should be of the left, not on the right side.
I don't know if it's because I was in a VM, and it didn't see a wi-fi interface, But I didn't see anyway to configure wi-fi in the system settings. Maybe I need to download something for that to work.
I confess, I do like the floating windows, I can move them wherever I like and resize them. The terminal windows was fairly snappy, even in 2GB.
LXQt uses a browser called Falkon. You dont hear much about it. At first I thought maybe it only ran under LXQt but there is a KDE version, in fact it seems Falkon was written by the KDE team. This is a very light browser. It runs fairly well in 2GB. It mentioned earlier LXGt can be lighter than Anti X running IceWm. This is one of those cases. The browser is the secret. People install a low resource distro light "DamnSmall or "Anti X", and then they run a hog browser like Chrome or Firefox. I notice Falkon has a "duckduckgo" search bar built in. I may have to check into this browser alittle more in another review.
Ha... anyone remember Xscreensaver? Here is a version that works under wayland. Although admittedly it was missing a lot of the modules.
I also notice that falkon has a built-in ad-blocker. I didn't install any add-ons or modules, I got this message out of the box.
The file browser works as expected. I will say after a while, the "Drop application icons" message in the bottom left corner becomes a little annoying. I was tempted to install something and drag an icon there just so it would go away.
All in all, for a low resource desktop, I like it. I have an old AMD Phenom system (2GB) I may try to install this on later. I am told Kaos and OpenMandrive LX use falkon as the default browser as well. Who knew? Anyway, there's not a lot more to add. Everything works as expected.
It's certainly not as full featured as other desktops, but it is definitely low resource.

