Lightweight Qt Desktop Environment `Razor Qt` Reaches Version 0.5.0

Razor Qt is a lightweight desktop environment - think of it as LXDE, but using Qt. It doesn't come with its own window manager and its developers recommend using it with Openbox, but it should work with any window manager like Kwin, Metacity, etc.

Razor Qt 0.5.0 has been released yesterday, bringing lots of new features and performance improvements. For instance, there's a new appearance GUI for configuring themes:

Another important change is the introduction of a notification daemon which comes with its own configuration tool, used to set the notifications position on the screen as well as some advanced settings uder which the user can set the expiration time, spacing or width:

Razor Qt 0.5.0 also comes with its own LightDM login screen greeter:

The greeter is not set when you install Razor Qt. To use it, you need to edit "/etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf" and set "greeter-session=lightdm-razor-greeter", then save the file and restart the computer.


Other changes included with Razor Qt 0.5.0:

• new panel applets: cpu monitor, lm sensor, volume control that supports alsa or pulseaudio, color picker, network monitor
• new keyboard shortcut configuration tool
• there's only one Razor Qt session now and the window manager can be configured through the Razor Qt config tool
• split config session window, due new session autostart changes, featuring better system tray support
• nicer razor-config app layout
• better integration with window managers from fvwm family
• new desktop widget: notepad
• architecture changes to prevent RTTI related crashes and suppor for all Qt versions
• huge performance optimizatons
• more

Install Razor Qt in Ubuntu

Ubuntu users 12.10, 12.04, 11.10, 11.04 or 10.04 can install the latest Razor Qt by using its official PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:razor-qt
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install razorqt

Once installed, log out and select "Razor Desktop" from the login screen.

For other Linux distributions, see the Razor Qt installation page.

For more info, see our initial Razor Qt post.