Today, August 12, 2016, Lubuntu Linux maintainer Simon Quigley announced something that many of you have expected for so long, the migration of the lightweight Ubuntu flavor to the modern LXQt desktop environment.
LXQt is a variant of the old-school LXDE (Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment) user interface for GNU/Linux operating systems based on the latest Qt technologies, not GTK+ like LXDE currently is. Some say that LXQt will replace LXDE at some point in time, so it's better for distributions that use LXDE to move to LXQt as soon as possible.
"The Lubuntu team is ready to begin the migration process to LXQt, and one of the first parts of the migration is getting an image to move to. We have prepared the lubuntu-qt-desktop metapackage and we are ready for an image," says Simon Quigley on behalf of the Lubuntu team.
Lubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) could be built on top of LXQt
Until today, the Lubuntu team hesitated to switch away from LXDE because the LXQt desktop environment was still in development. However, the latest version, LXQt 0.10.0, is currently the most stable one, but work on the lightweight, modular, blazing-fast and user-friendly desktop environment won't stop here.
Considering the fact that the development cycle of Lubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) is ongoing, now it's the best time for the Lubuntu developers to start the migration process to the Lightweight Qt Desktop Environment (LXQt), which, if things go according to plan, might be the default interface for Lubuntu 16.10.
Shortly after today's announcement, the Lubuntu devs will try to push the first Live ISO images of Lubuntu Linux with the LXQt desktop environment for public testing, if their merge proposals will be accepted by Canonical's Adam Conrad. As usual, we'll keep you guys in the loop as soon as we know more about this merge.
