Bug 29315

Summary: Provide LXQt instead of LXDE
Product: Mageia Reporter: Omer I.S. <omeritzicschwartz>
Component: InstallerAssignee: Mageia tools maintainers <mageiatools>
Status: RESOLVED FIXED QA Contact:
Severity: enhancement    
Priority: Normal CC: davidwhodgins, dglent, fri, guillaume.royer, isobuild, j.biernacki+mga, mageia, ngompa13, nicolas.salguero, yvesbrungard
Version: CauldronKeywords: IN_RELEASENOTES9
Target Milestone: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Source RPM: CVE:
Status comment:

Description Omer I.S. 2021-07-31 22:17:09 CEST
Please provide LXQt instead of LXDE in the installer, as LXQt is more maintained than LXDE.
Comment 1 Lewis Smith 2021-08-01 20:59:40 CEST
But less mature. I use both, and never find anything in LxQt that makes me want to stay with it at present. It has been seen as the LXDE replacement for years, but never seems to get there. If it did, LXDE would become redundant.

BTAIM Passing this request to our Tools people to consider.

CC: (none) => lewyssmith
Assignee: bugsquad => mageiatools

Comment 2 Neal Gompa 2021-08-02 02:26:07 CEST
Per GTK upstream[1], GTK2 is EOL now and we should try to eliminate as many dependencies on it as possible:

> GTK 4 is now stable, and we consider it ready for consumption. That does not mean GTK 3 is dead – we will continue to support and update it for the foreseeable future (the latest release, 3.24.24, quietly went out a few days ago). It does mean, however, that GTK 2 has reached the end of its life. We will do one final 2.x release in the coming days, and we encourage everybody to port their GTK 2 applications to GTK 3 or 4.


[1]: https://blog.gtk.org/2020/12/16/gtk-4-0/

CC: (none) => ngompa13

Comment 3 Nicolas Salguero 2021-08-02 13:58:52 CEST
Hi,

In Cauldron, I built all LXDE packages with gtk3, adding patches to some packages to fix several bugs.

The only remaining bug so far concerns lxpanel: when adding tabs to the taskbar, it expands the screen limits and the tab width does not change whereas, with gtk2, new tabs decrease in width and taskbar is fixed in width (see: https://sourceforge.net/p/lxde/bugs/948/).

Best regards,

Nico.

CC: (none) => nicolas.salguero

Comment 4 Lewis Smith 2021-08-03 11:10:22 CEST
Thanks for the various inputs. I thought we had already purged GTK2 from Mageia.

A decision about this will need to be made for Mageia 9 Installer:
- Leave LXDE as a listed desktop choice, LxQt among the 'others'
- Put LxQt as the listed choice, and LXDE among the 'others'
- Have both as specifically listed choices (6 -> 7)
- Put both among 'others' (6 -> 5)
- Drop LXDE if the wider Linux community view is for that; replace the current LXDE choice by LxQt.

P.S. I am a strong fan of Mageia's out-of-the-box [Classic] many desktop choices, which I believe is unique to us and a powerful +.

CC: lewyssmith => (none)

Comment 5 Dimitrios Glentadakis 2022-04-18 08:11:35 CEST
I support the second, to put LXQt in installer ad a Desktop choice

It has reached the version 1.1.0 now, a mature and very stable DE (i use it since 2014)

And we have a very good LXQt intergration in Mageia

CC: (none) => dglent

Comment 6 papoteur 2022-11-07 10:25:30 CET
This is not to eliminate LXDE from the distro, but to have LXQt on the installation media instead of LXDE.
I support also this option. LXQt is my main Desktop, although the one from Mageia 8 is old now.
It is also the desktop of Lubuntu, thus widely used.

CC: (none) => yves.brungard_mageia

papoteur 2022-11-07 10:26:42 CET

CC: (none) => isobuild

Comment 7 Martin Whitaker 2022-11-07 14:41:00 CET
If you use the netinstall ISOs, or if you select additional on-line media when using the classical installer ISOs, LXQt is offered as a listed desktop choice. So the only question is whether or not the necessary packages should be included on the classical installer ISO. As we are once again hard up against the size limit for the ISOs, that would mean evicting something else.

LXDE is still being maintained, so there is no clear justification for dropping it.

CC: (none) => mageia

Comment 8 Guillaume Royer 2023-06-15 10:39:21 CEST
Hello,

Even though I'm not very active at the moment, I'd like to give my opinion.
I've been using LXQt since Mageia 7 with real pleasure and no problems. I've also used LXDE on Mageia 8 and there's no comparison in terms of ergonomics. LXQt is much more comfortable, and Papoteur and David_David have helped to make it even more enjoyable.
To repeat Papoteur's arguments, Lubuntu has left LXDE in favour of LXQt and Emmabüntus offers LXQt as an alternative ED.
Papoteur has produced an ISO Live LXQt that works very well. I now only use this DE when I need to install a Mageia or other Linux on a computer with few resources. Lubuntu live is very practical because it's light to start up and allows you to quickly see if the PC in question works well with Linux or if it has any compatibility problems.
I think it would be in our interest to move in this direction.

CC: (none) => guillaume.royer

Comment 9 Morgan Leijström 2023-06-15 10:54:28 CEST
(In reply to Martin Whitaker from comment #7)
> we are once again hard up
> against the size limit for the ISOs, that would mean evicting something else.
> 
> LXDE is still being maintained, so there is no clear justification for
> dropping it.

Of we *switch* to including LXQt instead of LXDE, would the ISO be larger or smaller?

Not dropping anything in Mageia; if switching which one is on ISO, the other can be installed by netinstall anyway or adding repos during install...

CC: (none) => fri

Comment 10 Dave Hodgins 2023-06-15 19:50:51 CEST
Not changing will make the people who prefer lxqt unsatisfied.
Changing will make the people who prefer lxde unsatisfied.

Mageia intentionally does not collect any usage statistics, so there's no
way to know which one is more popular.

Any attempt to collect usage statistics is only going to get results from
an unknown percentage of users.

Unless there is a clear justification for making the switch such as lxde no
longer being maintained, the change can not be justified.

Status: NEW => RESOLVED
Resolution: (none) => WONTFIX
CC: (none) => davidwhodgins

Comment 11 papoteur 2023-06-16 09:29:04 CEST
(In reply to Dave Hodgins from comment #10)
> Any attempt to collect usage statistics is only going to get results from
> an unknown percentage of users.
> 
> Unless there is a clear justification for making the switch such as lxde no
> longer being maintained, the change can not be justified.

Hi David,
This can't be what drives Mageia. The world around us is evolving, and the rule you state would assign us to stand still.
If we don't have a receiver connected to our users, all we have left is our sensibility as makers of distribution. Let's at least give ourselves the right to take the initiative in making our distribution evolve so that it remains our favorite.
Comment 12 Dimitrios Glentadakis 2023-06-16 11:32:44 CEST
(In reply to Dave Hodgins from comment #10)
> Unless there is a clear justification for making the switch such as lxde no
> longer being maintained, the change can not be justified.


I would see this a little bit different, instead of the criteria if "LXDE project is maintained or not", it is better to provide LXQt instead, if the last one is more popular in Mageia maintainers, contributors, users who at least express their selfs in forums and mailing lists...
Comment 13 Jybz 2023-06-16 18:07:42 CEST
If we do not ask, we will never know.

This topic comes regularly, closing the ticket with 'it is so because it was so and it will always be so' is not a approach in my opinion.

Let open a pool and a blog post inviting to vote for :

- Preinstalled LXDE ISO
- Preinstalled LXQt ISO and abandon LXDE ISO

Resolution: WONTFIX => (none)
Status: RESOLVED => REOPENED
CC: (none) => j.biernacki+mga

Comment 14 Martin Whitaker 2023-06-16 18:46:46 CEST
There is no pre-installed LXDE ISO. The only question is whether LXQt should be available on the classical installer ISO. As the 64-bit CI ISO is close to the 4.7GB DVD limit, that probably requires dropping another DE, e.g. LXDE.

If you use the netinstall ISO, all DEs are available in the installer.
Comment 15 Martin Whitaker 2023-06-16 18:53:19 CEST
And if you add additional on-line media at the start of installation, all DEs become available when using the CI ISO too.
Comment 16 Dave Hodgins 2023-06-16 19:12:03 CEST
(In reply to Jybz from comment #13)
> If we do not ask, we will never know.
> 
> This topic comes regularly, closing the ticket with 'it is so because it was
> so and it will always be so' is not a approach in my opinion.
> 
> Let open a pool and a blog post inviting to vote for :
> 
> - Preinstalled LXDE ISO
> - Preinstalled LXQt ISO and abandon LXDE ISO

Only an unknown percentage of Mageia users read the blog, so that is of
no benefit.

The changes to the list of packages included in the iso image are up to
the iso creators working with the qa team who's responsibility is to
ensure their choices work.

Note we are not discussing pre-installing lxde or lxqt, just which one to
include in the classical iso image for installing on a system without
network access.
Comment 17 Dave Hodgins 2023-06-16 19:17:35 CEST
Also, we will not be adding additional iso images. The time it takes to create,
and test the existing classical and xfce live iso images for both x86_64 and
i586 systems, and the live gnome and kde plasma x86_64 images and document
them is long enough. Increasing the number of iso images would make the time
it takes to get the alpha, beta, rc, and final iso images built and tested
even longer.
Comment 18 Martin Whitaker 2023-06-16 20:41:40 CEST
(In reply to Martin Whitaker from comment #14)
> There is no pre-installed LXDE ISO. The only question is whether LXQt should
> be available on the classical installer ISO. As the 64-bit CI ISO is close
> to the 4.7GB DVD limit, that probably requires dropping another DE, e.g.
> LXDE.

Having said that, the removal of some unnecessary dependencies from the nvidia drivers has freed up 200MB of space on the ISO. So currently there is room to add LXQt.
Comment 19 Guillaume Royer 2023-06-16 20:51:47 CEST
I don't find the netinstall and classic iso argument valid. I've installed a few laptops that didn't have an Ethernet port and whose wi-fi card wasn't configurable with the installer. So I couldn't go looking for LXQt. 
I had to run IceWM before installing LXQt, which was a pain. This argument can also be returned. If you swap LXQt and LXDE, there's nothing to stop people who want to install LXDE configuring the media online or using netinstall.
We're not obliged to do this for Mageia 9 given its imminent release, but it seems to me that the subject deserves to be discussed for future versions in view of LXQt's growing popularity.
I understand that a new Live is complicated to set up and test. I used this example to illustrate the fact that I used this DE a lot.
Comment 20 Dave Hodgins 2023-06-16 21:56:08 CEST
For low resource systems, I use xfce4 (usually the live iso).
Comment 21 Jybz 2023-06-17 15:39:16 CEST
Thank you; preinstalled is not the good word; embedded would be better.

What you are using (xfce) is a bit out of topic because it is your personal choice and it is heavier than LXQt. I remember the demo of a single board computer with Mageia, they use LXQt and not XFCE. But this is a personal choice.

I just tried to install task-lxqt:
496MB of additional disk space will be used.
192MB of packages will be retrieved.
Proceed with the installation of the 302 packages? (Y/n) n

In the list of packages to install:
> libkf5activities5              5.76.0       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5archive5                 5.76.0       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5attica5                  5.76.0       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5auth5                    5.76.0       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5authcore5                5.76.0       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5codecs5                  5.76.0       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5completion5              5.76.0       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5configcore5              5.76.0       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5configgui5               5.76.0       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5configwidgets5           5.76.0       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5coreaddons5              5.76.0       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5crash5                   5.76.0       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5dbusaddons5              5.76.0       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5declarative5             5.76.0       3.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5globalaccel5             5.76.0       2.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5globalaccelprivate5      5.76.0       2.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5guiaddons5               5.76.0       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5i18n5                    5.76.0       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5iconthemes5              5.76.0       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5idletime5                5.76.0       1.mga8        armv7hl 
> libkf5itemviews5               5.76.0       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5jobwidgets5              5.76.0       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5kcmutils5                5.76.0       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5kiocore5                 5.76.0       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5kiogui5                  5.76.0       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5kiowidgets5              5.76.0       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5kscreen7                 5.20.4       1.mga8        armv7hl 
> libkf5package5                 5.76.0       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5pty5                     5.76.0       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5quickaddons5             5.76.0       3.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5service5                 5.76.0       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5solid5                   5.76.0       1.mga8        armv7hl 
> libkf5sonnetcore5              5.76.0       2.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5sonnetui5                5.76.0       2.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5su5                      5.76.0       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5wayland5                 5.76.0       1.mga8        armv7hl 
> libkf5widgetsaddons5           5.76.0       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libkf5windowsystem5            5.76.0       1.mga8        armv7hl 
> libkf5xmlgui5                  5.76.0       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> ...
> libqt5keychain1                0.11.1       2.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libqt5positioning5             5.15.2       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libqt5qmlworkerscript5         5.15.2       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libqt5quickparticles5          5.15.2       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libqt5quickshapes5             5.15.2       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libqt5quicktest5               5.15.2       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libqt5quickwidgets5            5.15.2       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libqt5sensors5                 5.15.2       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libqt5webchannel5              5.15.2       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libqt5webkit5                  5.212.0      1.alpha4.6.m> armv7hl (recommended)
> libqt5webkitwidgets5           5.212.0      1.alpha4.6.m> armv7hl (recommended)
> libqt5xdg3                     3.6.0        3.mga8        armv7hl 
> libqt5concurrent5              5.15.2       4.8.mga8      armv7hl (recommended)
> libqt5pdf5                     5.15.8       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libqt5test5                    5.15.2       4.8.mga8      armv7hl (recommended)
> libqt5webengine5               5.15.8       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libqt5webenginecore5           5.15.8       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libqt5webenginewidgets5        5.15.8       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> libqt5xdgiconloader3           3.6.0        3.mga8        armv7hl 
> libqtermwidget5_0              0.16.1       2.mga8        armv7hl 
> libqtxdg                       3.6.0        3.mga8        armv7hl 
> ...
> python3-qt5-network            5.15.2       2.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> python3-qt5-qml                5.15.2       2.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> python3-qt5-quick              5.15.2       2.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> ...
> qtdeclarative5                 5.15.2       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> qterminal                      0.16.1       2.mga8        armv7hl 
> qtermwidget                    0.16.1       2.mga8        armv7hl 
> qtgraphicaleffects5            5.15.2       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> qtquickcontrols5               5.15.2       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> qtsensors5                     5.15.2       1.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> ...
> task-x11                       1            10.mga8       noarch  
> x11-data-cursor-themes         1.0.6        1.mga8        noarch  
> x11-driver-input               6.0.0        7.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> x11-driver-input-libinput      0.30.0       1.mga8        armv7hl 
> x11-driver-input-wacom         0.39.0       2.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> x11-driver-video               7.7          20.mga8       armv7hl (recommended)
> x11-driver-video-amdgpu        19.1.0       7.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> x11-driver-video-ati           19.1.0       6.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> x11-driver-video-fbdev         0.5.0        3.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> x11-driver-video-qxl           0.1.5        16.mga8       armv7hl (recommended)
> x11-driver-video-v4l           0.3.0        3.mga8        armv7hl (recommended)
> x11-font-encodings             1.0.5        2.mga8        noarch  
> x11-server-common              1.20.14      4.3.mga8      armv7hl 
> x11-server-xorg                1.20.14      4.3.mga8      armv7hl 
> x11-server-xwayland            1.20.14      4.3.mga8      armv7hl 

I believe this 84/302 packages are already in the ISO, so the required space should be really less than 200MB.

I don't know how to quickly do better measurement on the footprint. Martin, do you have a trick to measure without doing ?
Comment 22 Martin Whitaker 2023-06-18 00:59:12 CEST
(In reply to Jybz from comment #21)
> I believe this 84/302 packages are already in the ISO, so the required space
> should be really less than 200MB.
> 
> I don't know how to quickly do better measurement on the footprint. Martin,
> do you have a trick to measure without doing ?

Quickest method is to try it - it takes around a minute to build a CI ISO from a local mirror on a fast SSD. IIRC, adding LXQt added 40-50MB to the ISO size.
Comment 23 Martin Whitaker 2023-08-12 16:32:54 CEST
LXQt is now included on the classical installer ISOs.

Resolution: (none) => FIXED
Status: REOPENED => RESOLVED

Comment 24 Morgan Leijström 2023-08-13 10:58:04 CEST
And already in release notes :)

Keywords: (none) => IN_RELEASENOTES9

Comment 25 Guillaume Royer 2023-08-14 20:23:48 CEST
Good news!

Thank you !