LXQt 2.1.0 released with optional Wayland session

LXQt, the desktop environment that is to KDE what Xfce is to GNOME, has released version 2.1.0, and while the version number change seems average, it’s got a big ace up its sleeve: you can now run LXQt in a Wayland session, and they claim it works quite well, too, and it supports a wide variety of compositors.

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.

↫ LXQt 2.1.0 release announcement

This is great news for LXQt, as it ensures the desktop environment is ready to keep up with what modern Linux distributions provide. Crucially and in line with what we’ve come to expect from LXQt, X11 support is a core part of the project, and they even go so far as to say “the X11 session will be supported indefinitely”, which should set people preferring to stay on X11 at ease. I personally may have gleefully left X11 in the dustbin of history, but many among us haven’t, and it’s welcome to see LXQt’s clear promise here.

Many of the other improvements in this release are tied to Wayland, making sure the various components work and Wayland settings can be adjusted. On top of that, there’s the usual list of bug fixes and smaller changes, too.