LXQt 2.5 is out, and the headline news is not the terminal emulator. The release closes a cleanup more than a decade in the making: the lightweight Qt-based desktop environment has now shed the last LXDE-era dependency from its stack, leaving nothing in the build pointing back to the GTK 2 desktop it was forked from.
The enhanced QTerminal, covered by Phoronix in its release report, is the most visible user-facing change. But the dependency removal is the milestone that matters to packagers, downstream maintainers, and anyone responsible for keeping older machines productive.
A fork that finally cut the cord
LXQt was born out of the LXDE project's turn away from GTK 2, with its components rebuilt on Qt. For years, a handful of legacy pieces from the original LXDE codebase survived as transitive dependencies in the build. LXQt 2.5 clears the last of them, according to Phoronix, so the project's dependency graph is now internally consistent with its Qt 6 migration — a change that simplifies packaging and removes a lingering source of version conflicts for distributions.
That migration has been the connecting thread across recent LXQt releases, and 2.5 continues it. For distributions that ship LXQt as their default lightweight environment, dropping the final LXDE component means one less package to coordinate across a release cycle, and one fewer reason to keep GTK2-era libraries alive in a repository.
QTerminal gets the polish
The user-facing headline is a reworked QTerminal. Terminal emulators are the one application lightweight-desktop users tend to live in — scripts, package management, remote sessions — so improvements there tend to be noticed quickly rather than filed away. Phoronix's report puts the QTerminal enhancements at the front of the release, alongside the usual round of fixes and incremental improvements across the rest of the LXQt component set.
Beyond the terminal, the release is characterised as ongoing work on performance and long-term support rather than a redesign of the desktop's workflow. LXQt's appeal has always been restraint: a panel, a menu, a window manager (usually Openbox by default), and little else competing for memory.
Why it matters beyond the changelog
For IT professionals anywhere maintaining ageing office hardware, thin clients, and repurposed laptops on a long replacement cycle, lightweight desktops remain one of the cheapest ways to extend a machine's life without a hardware refresh. A desktop environment that is clean of legacy dependencies is easier for a distribution to maintain over the long term, which in turn makes it a safer bet for machines you do not plan to touch again for several years.
The Qt 6 base also matters for that audience in practical terms: it aligns LXQt with the toolkit direction of the wider Qt ecosystem, reducing the chance that a desktop gets stranded on an unmaintained library stack.
Availability follows the usual pattern — LXQt releases reach the repositories of rolling-release and lightweight distributions shortly after launch, while stable-branch distributions typically pick the version up at their next regular cycle. Readers running LXQt as their default desktop should check their distribution's package tracker for the 2.5 upgrade rather than assuming an immediate update.
Perspective
Stripped of the QTerminal banner, LXQt 2.5 is a release with almost no new features to speak of — and that is precisely the point. What shipped is structural rather than cosmetic: a dependency tree that no longer reaches into another project's history. For a desktop environment whose entire pitch has been predictability, maturity of this kind counts as progress.
It is also the moment the fork stops being a fork. LXQt has carried LXDE's DNA as transitive baggage through every recent cycle; with that link severed, the project's Qt 6 identity is complete rather than aspirational. Packagers no longer need to reason about a GTK2-era component sitting underneath a Qt 6 desktop, and downstreams can treat LXQt as a self-contained stack when planning multi-year support windows.
The wider signal is consolidation. With LXQt now firmly on Qt 6, the lightweight-desktop field is converging on a small set of modern toolkit baselines — Qt 6 at one end, GTK 4 at the other. For maintainers choosing where to invest packaging effort, that narrowing is welcome: fewer hybrid stacks to support, fewer legacy libraries to keep alive, and a clearer picture of which environments will still be receiving updates when the hardware they run on finally reaches retirement.
Source: Phoronix — LXQt 2.5 Released With Enhanced QTerminal, Removing The Final LXDE Dependency
LXQt 2.5 已正式發布，而頭條消息並非終端模擬器。這次版本為一項長達十多年的工作畫上句號：這個以 Qt 為基礎的輕量桌面環境，如今已從其技術棧中移除最後一項 LXDE 時代的依賴，構建過程再無任何部分指向其最初 fork 所源自的 GTK 2 桌面。
Phoronix 在發布報導中重點介紹的增強版 QTerminal，是用戶最能直接感受到的改動。然而，對打包者、下游維護者，以及任何需要讓舊硬件維持生產力的人士而言，移除依賴才是真正意義上的里程碑。
一個終於徹底「斷奶」的 fork
LXQt 的誕生源自 LXDE 項目放棄 GTK 2、轉而以 Qt 重建其組件的轉向。多年來，原始 LXDE 代碼庫中的一小部分遺留元件，一直以間接依賴（transitive dependency）的形式存在於構建之中。據 Phoronix 報導，LXQt 2.5 已清除最後一項這類依賴，項目現時的依賴關係圖（dependency graph）終於與其 Qt 6 遷移在內部保持一致——此舉簡化了打包流程，並消除發行版中一個長期存在的版本衝突根源。
這項遷移一直是近期各個 LXQt 版本的主線，2.5 延續了這一方向。對於以 LXQt 作為預設輕量桌面環境的發行版來說，移除最後一個 LXDE 組件，意味著在一個發行週期中少了一個需要協調的套件，也少了一個在軟件庫中繼續維持 GTK2 時代函式庫的理由。
QTerminal 獲得打磨
用戶層面的頭條消息是重新設計的 QTerminal。終端模擬器是輕量桌面用戶日常使用最頻繁的應用——腳本、套件管理、遙距會話——因此相關改進通常會立即引起注意，而不會被擱置不理。Phoronix 的報導將 QTerminal 的增強列為此次發布的重點，同時照例伴隨 LXQt 其餘組件的一系列修正與漸進式改進。
在終端之外，這次發布的定位是持續改善性能與長期支援，而非重新設計桌面的工作流程。LXQt 的吸引力一向在於克制：一個面板、一個選單、一個視窗管理員（預設通常為 Openbox），以及盡量少的其他東西爭用記憶體。
為何超越 changelog 仍具意義
對於世界各地維護老舊辦公硬件、瘦客戶端（thin client），以及在漫長更換週期中持續重用筆記型電腦的 IT 專業人士而言，輕量桌面始終是以最低成本延長硬件壽命、避免硬件升級的途徑之一。一個沒有遺留依賴的桌面環境，發行版從長遠來看更易維護，這也使它成為那些你打算未來數年都不再碰的機器的更穩妥選擇。
Qt 6 底座對這群用戶同樣具有實際意義：它使 LXQt 與更廣泛 Qt 生態系統的工具包（toolkit）發展方向保持一致，降低桌面環境被擱置在一個缺乏維護的函式庫技術棧上的風險。
發布渠道一如既往——LXQt 版本在發布後不久便會進入 rolling-release 及輕量發行版的軟件庫，而穩定分支發行版通常會在下一個常規週期才採用新版本。正在以 LXQt 作為預設桌面的讀者，應前往所用發行版的套件追蹤系統查看 2.5 升級，而非預設更新會即時推出。
觀點
撇開 QTerminal 的宣傳不談，LXQt 2.5 幾乎沒有任何新功能可言——而這正是重點所在。這次發布帶來的是結構性的改變，而非外觀修飾：一棵不再延伸至另一個項目歷史的依賴樹。對於一個整體訴求就是可預測性的桌面環境而言，這種成熟度本身便是進展。
這也是這個 fork 終於不再只是 fork 的時刻。過去每個近期週期，LXQt 都一直攜帶着 LXDE 的 DNA 作為間接包袱；隨着這條連結被切斷，該項目的 Qt 6 身份已然完整，而不再只是目標。打包者毋須再考慮一個 Qt 6 桌面之下還藏着一個 GTK2 時代的組件，下游維護者在規劃長達數年的支援窗口時，也可以將 LXQt 視為一個自成一體的技術棧。
更大的信號是整合。隨着 LXQt 穩固地立足 Qt 6，輕量桌面領域正逐漸收斂於少數幾個現代工具包基線——一端是 Qt 6，另一端是 GTK 4。對於正在選擇將打包工作投入何處的維護者而言，這種收斂是好消息：需要支援的混合技術棧更少，需要維持的遺留函式庫更少，而哪些桌面環境在運行硬件最終退役時仍會繼續獲得更新，圖景也更為清晰。
來源：Phoronix — LXQt 2.5 Released With Enhanced QTerminal, Removing The Final LXDE Dependency