LXDE Blog

“The future of Razor and LXDE-Qt”

Jerome Leclanche from the Razor-qt project posted to the LXDE and Razor-qt mailing lists yesterday about the future of the Razor project and the LXDE Qt subproject.

“…we have decided that the best course of action for both projects is to focus on a single desktop environment, instead of two.
There have been talks of ‘merging’ ever since LXDE-Qt was announced. Having taken the decision to collaborate, we’ve all had the pleasure of working together already.
Our plan is to cherry-pick the best parts of Razor and LXDE and include or port those to LXDE-Qt. Other components will be ported straight from GTK code or rewritten from scratch. In the end, we want to offer the best possible experience while reusing as much code as possible.”

In the coming weeks, our two teams will coordinate LXDE-Qt’s first release and Razor-qt’s official final release. The GTK version of LXDE will still be worked on and kept up to date with any improvement to the Qt version for the forseeable future.

In the longer term, most Razor-qt components will fully be integrated into the LXDE-Qt and both teams will focus on the same project. Looking further ahead, the GTK version of LXDE will be dropped and all efforts will be focused on the Qt port. We, the main developers and administrators of the projects, will try to figure out where we align and where we have differences to grind out.

See the complete posting at the mail archive for either Razor Qt or LXDE-list.

Bringing these two fine projects together will require help and we invite developers, translators and early adopters to join the effort at lxde-list@lists.sourceforge.net.

brother

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26 responses to ““The future of Razor and LXDE-Qt””

  2. Is it known what panel will be “kept” as part of LXDE-QT? I LOVE LXpanel, and would hate to see it go.

  3. Wich will be the main repository, Sourceforge or Github?

    I’m not sure if the instructions in http://wiki.lxde.org/en/Build_LXDE-Qt_From_Source are up to date. I can do the ‘fetch’ and other commands in every independent directory but not sure if there is a way to clone all the subdirectories at git://lxde|pcmanfm.git.sourceforge.net/gitroot/lxde|pcmanfm/ in one command. Thank you in advance 🙂

  4. That is so great! colaboration!

    All the best to both (now one) team(s)!

  7. I am very excited about this news. I am eager to switch to LXDE-Qt. I now use XFCE and am quite glad to hear this news. I have also started learn Qt before hearing this. That is why I am so excited.

  11. nice to see these DEs converging. Razor-QT is visually very appealling, and certainly we’ll have an awesome new DE (I hope soon 🙂

  12. what about changing the name to LQDE or something shorter than LXDE-Qt?
    i’m very happy with this news! i look forward for a better DE and hopefully a better menu in the future!!

  13. What about window manager? It would be still openbox? What with wayland if yes?

  14. I like both Qt Razor and LXDE. While Razor are more visually appealing LXDE are more stable and mature, so currently I am using LXDE. When I saw that LXDE where switching to Qt I thougth “they should coordinate or merge with Razor.” and I’m glad to se thats happened.

    The first thing that I want to se in LXDE are better support for multiple monitor. The current suppor only works if the monitors have equal resolution, otherwise part of the panel will be put on a part of the virtual desktop that are displayed on neither montor.

    As to the Lightweight debate we have been seeing I would define two use cases that I consider important:

    1) Low end hardware, mostly Raspbery Pi which I rather use than old hardware. Its considered compareable with a 300Mhz PII.

    2) Multiuser terminal servers. This usually applies to modern hardware, but lightweight software allows more concurrent users.

    In the second use case mores law cannot be used as a argument against lightweight software, with better hardware I want to squeeze more users onto it… not more cpu cycles.

    Also an important difference between the two use cases are hardware accelleration. Terminal Servers imply no access to OpenGL while the Raspberry Pi have excellent OpenGL support.

    There are also the issue of usability. I find that users work faster and learn qucker with simple Win 95-like GUI:s and i would consider that look and feel lightweight compared to what QNOME and KDE are currenlty doing.

  15. Great news! I love both LXDE and QT, never used Razor QT but looks nice and clean, greate to see two team comeing along… about the name I like gui idea, LQDE could be LiQuiD E…

  18. How do you expect this to impact the requirements of LXDE? I *really* like the fact LXDE is so lightweight and responsive as I’m running it on 2006-era laptop hardware.

  19. Great news! I have used Razor-QT a lot in the past, but stopped due to the weird panel glitches I got on my system. Looking forward to what the new merger brings.

    Name suggestion: X-based Professional Lightweight-Oriented Desktop Environment ( XPLODE )

  20. @Onyx: won’t necessarily require X, so why not…RAZOR: Real Attitude Zero Overhead…R! XD

  21. This is great news, ..!
    >LXDE – Stability & light
    >Razor-Qt – visual appearance & light
    now going to merge!

    The only thing I don’t like is the name, and what if LXDE-Qt is ported to Wayland one day.. LWDE-Qt? Kinda weird & unappealing.

    Are you planning on renaming it anyways?

  22. What about the future of name? Wayland, Mir support?

  23. I just had a look at some screenshots. Someone please tell me that you can delete/remove that BAF clock on the desktop.

  24. 2006 Hardware will still run (provided of course that it doesn’t breakdown) in 2026 with LXDE-Qt. Way to go; but a lot of people are uncomfortable with the name – someone do something about it.

    Good Luck!

  26. my vote still goes to LQDE
    it makes perfect sense
    will “work” with any server they choose to port (Mir, Wayland, XMir…) and is not a “big” change in the look. “Lightweight Qt Desktop Environment”