New in Lubuntu 24.10
LXQt 2.0 and Qt 6
Lubuntu 24.10 is the first release of Lubuntu to ship with a primarily Qt 6-based environment. Previous LXQt releases used Qt 5. Due to this upgrade, modern Qt 6-based apps such as the latest versions of VirtualBox, qBitTorrent, and more will now be themed similar to the rest of the desktop. Qt 5 app theming also still works, allowing you to continue to use apps that haven’t caught up with Qt 6 yet.
Lubuntu-specific applications (namely Lubuntu Update and the Lubuntu Installer Prompt) have also been updated to use Qt 6. The Calamares installer continues to use Qt 5 however. We expect to switch Calamares to using Qt 6 for Lubuntu 25.04
Kvantum Theming
For a while now, Lubuntu has been using the Breeze theme from KDE Plasma. While this has worked well enough for a while, it has had some incompatibilities with LXQt crop up before, and this cycle it happened again. Rather than continuing to make a KDE component work where it wasn’t really designed to, Lubuntu 24.10 now ships with Kvantum theming. Kvantum’s lead developer is also one of the primary developers of LXQt, so we expect no major incompatibilities going forward.
Our new theme, aptly named “Lubuntu”, is based upon Kvantum’s KvArc theme and is modified to look more similar to Lubuntu’s prior theming.
What happened to Wayland?
Readers who have kept up with our blog probably remember that we wanted to offer Wayland as an option in 24.04 and switch over to using Wayland by default in 24.10. Sadly this did not go according to plan. LXQt 1.4 and LXQt 2.0 both turned out to be too painful to use in a Wayland environment for us to be comfortable shipping Wayland by default, and we did not have time to implement them as an option. LXQt 2.1 is expected to ship with full Wayland support, so we will be trying to make Wayland happen for Lubuntu 25.04.
Artwork
Lubuntu 24.10 ships with a stunning new wallpaper and login screen. A special thank you to our Lubuntu art team for this lovely creation.
