Can we have Wing Menu as default menu for LXQt?

This would make LXQt look and feel so much more modern, IMO.

2 Likes

The GitHub link you provided looks good (covering installation on Lubuntu 22.04 LTS), but to publicize the theme you like, you could always write up a review of it on this site, telling us your release, how you installed it (instructions are on the page you provided, but did they work perfectly for you? what tweaks/changes did you do post-install etc) so others can enjoy the theme as you did.

If we (as in Lubuntu) did package & adopt it (we can only use packages from Ubuntu repositories), that would take time, where a post (by you) on this site or thread could benefit existing users, and not just users for future releases.

3 Likes

I literally just installed it, so I don’t have a review of it other than having a good first impression. I’ve been looking for an LXQt’s variant of MATE’s Brisk or Xfce’s Whisker menu, and am happy to have this installed.

It looks way more modern compared to the current one, and it is familiar enough to people who were used to using Windows XP or 7’s Start Menu, which is what drew me to it in the first place.

Installing the build dependencies was almost exactly as it was provided on the GitHub page, but I had to change the last 2 for Lunar (not sure for 22.04/22.10):

sudo apt install git build-essential cmake qttools5-dev liblxqt1-dev libkf5windowsystem-dev libqt5x11extras5-dev liblxqt-globalkeys-ui1-dev liblxqt-globalkeys1-dev 
2 Likes

(I noticed you already replied to my response on Reddit, but for the sake of others who read stuff here on Discourse, here’s the current Wing Menu situation in Lubuntu.)

We’ve actually looked into Wing Menu in the past. It looks really nice. Sadly, we did hit a showstopper when looking into packaging it.

In order to legally use software at all, one must either own the copyright to it, or the software must be licensed to the user by the copyright owner. This is why most software has a license agreement - it’s what gives you the legal permission to use the software. Even Ubuntu is licensed to the end user - the license simply (among other things) allows the user to use the software however they want to, and allows redistribution of the software with some restrictions. [1]

The problem here is, if software does not have any license, that means you cannot use it for any purpose. You can’t assume that it’s free because it has no license - the only safe thing to assume is that all rights are reserved. Using or redistributing that software is copyright infringement.

And this is where things get problematic with Wing Menu. Either by design or by oversight, the author of Wing Menu failed to apply any license agreement to their code. Maybe they’re still working on it and don’t want any distros to package it until it’s done, or maybe he just forgot. Or maybe he doesn’t intend to release Wing Menu as free software. Who knows. Currently, the only safe thing the Lubuntu developers can do with Wing Menu, is to leave it alone. We can’t redistribute it or package it without taking a legal risk, and so we don’t.

Technically, even your use of Wing Menu counts as copyright infringement. Whether you choose to accept the risks involved with that is your own choice, but we aren’t willing to take that risk ourselves. Plus it’s against Ubuntu’s development rules to include unlicensed software in the Ubuntu archive, so even if we were risk takers, we wouldn’t be able to include it in Lubuntu.

Yes, this is an unfortunate situation. However, there’s hope! There’s a bug report on Wing Menu already, asking for the author to specify Wing Menu’s license. If the author does choose a suitable open-source license for Wing Menu, we will definitely be taking another look at it.

[1]: For those who read “restrictions on redistributing Ubuntu? What do you mean?”, it’s not as scary as it might sound. I’m talking about things like the restrictions present in the GPL (things like “you can’t keep other people from redistributing this if you give them a copy”), as well as the trademark restrictions around Ubuntu’s branding. To the best of my knowledge, all of the official Ubuntu flavors, and probably most of the various Ubuntu remixes out there are perfectly legal.

5 Likes

Hi there, I know the thread is old but I was curious about the current licence status of Wing Menu. In applicationsview.h it clearly says it’s LGPL2+.

I know with 24.10 we will probably have Fancy Menu which I alreeady use on my current install of LXQT 2.0. In direct comparison the Wing Menu looks more attractive and still would be a great alternative.

The issue is still not addressed:

Some of the files appear to have a license, but not all of them, so still a problem.

I’d suggest you complain to the developer but it doesn’t look like they’re very responsive at all. They haven’t contributed anything to the menu or GitHub at all in 2 years. That’s not very encouraging.

4 Likes

Lxqt 2.0 comes by default with a similar menu called fancy menu.

2 Likes

Any chance of a cheeky screen shot?

3 Likes

Glad we got a modern menu, at least

1 Like

Is it possible to backport that menu on 24.04?

1 Like

I’m just glad we aren’t still using what we had in LXDE. I mean sure what we see right now is mostly still that but LXDE didn’t even have a search function. My god I don’t miss those days.

Glad to see it’s only going to get better. :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like

There has been some activity on GitHub regarding Wing menu. I don’t know if the license issues have been solved.

3 Likes

Not so long ago I commented in a reply on somebodies question why Lubuntu does not have the FancyMenu as the default menu plugin.

Below is a long story, firstly about FancyMenu, followed by and needed in the context of my response about WingMenu.

FancyMenu
If you read my response (which I referred to earlier) I was a bit negative about FancyMenu. I later found out why exactly, and how to mitigate that sensation. The strange thing about FancyMenu is, that its default navigation / layout is counter-intuitive. In fact, it is almost the “Classic Menu” with Favorites, but it feels different.

Until now I always put a shortcut to an application that is a favorite for me in the quick launch area in the panel. I would not like to replicate that in the designated favorites area in FancyMenu.

Thus, until recently, when I used FancyMenu, I always started with an empty “Favorites” area on the left (where the favorites are supposed to be), and I then needed to move the mouse all the way to the right where the menu categories are. That felt strange, I did not like to use FancyMenu (as a direct replacement of the classic menu).

Later I found out that there is a setting which swaps the ‘favorites’ and ‘categories’ areas. It is a psychological thing, that swapping, or lets call it ‘haptanomy’ in action.

Now, it works for me. I lied earlier; I do not put every favorite application in the quick launch area on the panel. A desktop is almost like a pig farm: all favorite applications are equal, but some are more equal and deserve their special place on the panel. The others, less favorable (i.e. less frequently used) can now be placed in FancyMenu, and reached quickly as well! Quite acceptable, my current FancyMenu.

WingMenu
After installing WingMenu and playing around with it, one thing is clear to me. WingMenu is superior to FancyMenu (even with the twist I described).

It is almost the same, but has on the left side an extra column with the ‘obvious’ system related actions. Very handy. Theming is still an issue (I use ‘Lubuntu Arc’), but that is not the most important thing. In general, it feels just good!

I think the LXQt project team (not the Lubuntu team, this is another project) missed the unique opportunity to embrace and incorporate WingMenu in the official software, and unfortunately came up with FancyMenu.