Lubuntu Noble pre-release experience sofar

[Fritz]

I am glad to let you all know that my experience with Noble are good. It looks and feels nice.

I am not too sure that the “intro slide” with which the whole experience starts (after starting the ISO) adds much. I read Simon’s blog about the next release, so I am aware of the background for reintroducing it. The green ‘connected’ notice at the bottom of the screen is deceptive (or erroneous).

Personally I would not distinguish between the several possible versions of install. Next, I encountered some error while installing one of the optional elements. Since it is explicitly stated that there is no guarantee about that, I did not bother too much.

Noble works as it should. I have a few remarks though.

1. The greeter screen (where you log in - part of the SDDM application) has two unnecessary options or sessions (LXQt Desktop and Openbox). Openbox does not work. Well, it does work, but you just get a black ‘canvas’ and not a working desktop. LXQt Desktop loads a sort of vanilla desktop (without proper theming, cursors and icons). I’ve fixed this by sudo-deleting two respective session files in /usr/share/xessions). Personally I would like to rename the remaining (and working option) Lubuntu as LXQt by Lubuntu. That’s what it is, isn’t it?

2. In the pre-release I’ve noticed that the Picom window manager is not working.

3. The SDDM Configuration application looks nice. First time I’ve seen it. Did not find a use for it yet, but it is nice to have anyway. I would not put it under the Accessories menu, but obfuscate it a bit, as part of the LXQt Configuration Center (under Other settings). Its friends live there too!

4. I used virt-manager. My Noble VM under test was itself running as a qemu vm, and it turns out that running another virt-manager inside virt-manager has exceptional good speed! It is amazing to see how quickly I was able to deploy Arch Linux with its LXQt inside my Noble VM. Very interesting, especially with the Lubuntu Artwork loaded on Arch as well

5. About Picom. I am sure it is glitch. I never used Picom (well, not that I noticed it or was aware of). I am a big fan of xfwm4. It is my window manager of choice. Since the Lubuntu Handbook notices already the possibility of deploying one of several window managers, it would be a nice gesture if Noble also provides xfwm4 by default. In combination of the xfwm4 transparancy settings as used by Debian it would make a great choice (without these particular settings xfwm4 is less attractive, and does not make a big difference in comparison too e.g. Openbox). But anyway, let the user decide.

6. In general I think that the improvements and additions described in Simon’s blog posting (and beyond) are useful. Perhaps with one exception: nobleNote.

7. Finally, I did not encounter the same problem I had in two or three earlier releases with the drag-n-drop function of menu items to the quicklaunch area. Ough…that really was a showstopper

Keep up the Good Work!

Look Maaah…no snaps !!!

[humpty]

Picom is a Compositor (openbox is the default window manager).

Picom replaced compton.
But the compton configurator (compton-conf) (Window Effects)
has not yet been changed to config picom.
(it still only writes ~/.config/compton.conf instead of ~/.config/picom.conf)

Worse still, the compton.conf generated by compton-conf will be
read (by picom) if picom.conf does not exist.
There will be errors and it will crash.

To make it work, just move ~/.config/compton.conf to
somewhere else. This will make picom default to ~/.config/picom.conf.

The next problem is that picom.conf by default does not exist.
So you will not see any effects.
One way to create it is to copy compton.conf to picom.conf and
to edit out the offending errors.

An easier way is to install picom-conf (a fork of compton-conf).
An then to run picom-conf. The gui will generate a legal ~/.config/picom.conf.
picom-conf does have a quirk, in that it defaults the active-opacity to 0, making the active window transparent. So make sure you set it higher before you Apply.

[guiverc]

@Fritz

The greeter screen (where you log in - part of the SDDM application) has two unnecessary options or sessions (LXQt Desktop and Openbox). Openbox does not work. Well, it does work, but you just get a black ‘canvas’ and not a working desktop. LXQt Desktop loads a sort of vanilla desktop (without proper theming, cursors and icons). I’ve fixed this by sudo-deleting two respective session files in /usr/share/xessions). Personally I would like to rename the remaining (and working option) Lubuntu as LXQt by Lubuntu. That’s what it is, isn’t it?

I’ll refer you to a prior question on the three sessions (it isn’t the response I’ve written where I’d like to refer you to, but this one at least relates, this may also be helpful too).

@guiverc

I suspect here you are logging in, but don’t recognize that you’re logged in. When I login I get a black background and cursor; which is what I expect. On right click of black background I get the openbox menu, ie. a simple openbox session. Selecting ‘exit’ in the menu asks for confirmation of ending the openbox session and logs me out when I click Exit.

openbox is a WM and not a desktop; it thus doesn’t behave like a DE as its only a WM. It’s a blank environment on which you can build a very light system that can be used instead of a heavier desktop.

No panel is expected (that’s a desktop feature), no wallpaper (pcmanfm-qt does that for the LXQt desktop, but again that’s a desktop feature, but you can have a program do that too if needed) etc.

LXQt is a WM agnostic desktop, Lubuntu has chosen to use openbox as our WM, and we thus provide the capacity for users to login using only openbox WM if they wish. Many like the very light & sparse WM only (alas not me).

A purer upstream LXQt is also provided; something people can try, or use if they don’t like the Lubuntu session with all our configurations.

Thank you for your feedback; it may lead to some discussion (whilst most if visible on IRC & other platforms, not all appears in public rooms), and yeah we’re aware of a number of issues, that are being worked on (we’re not out of time yet!)

[ArrayBolt3]

@Fritz

The greeter screen (where you log in - part of the SDDM application) has two unnecessary options or sessions (LXQt Desktop and Openbox). Openbox does not work. Well, it does work, but you just get a black ‘canvas’ and not a working desktop. LXQt Desktop loads a sort of vanilla desktop (without proper theming, cursors and icons). I’ve fixed this by sudo-deleting two respective session files in /usr/share/xessions). Personally I would like to rename the remaining (and working option) Lubuntu as LXQt by Lubuntu. That’s what it is, isn’t it?

Well, no, that’s not what it is. LXQt is not made by Lubuntu, though we do interact with the LXQt developers oftentimes. Lubuntu also does not have its own flavor of LXQt per se (though we do sometimes introduce patches here and there to solve problems, but that’s rare and we try to minimize those as much as possible). The Lubuntu session is a particular preconfiguration of LXQt that we like and think others will also. It’s the default Lubuntu experience.

The LXQt Desktop session you see is somewhat of an artifact of the LXQt installation we provide (if I’m understanding correctly). Not sure how tough it would be to remove, but it has come in handy for debugging in the past.

The Openbox session is shipped by the Openbox package itself and isn’t something we particularly want to remove. Like @guiverc mentions, it works, and some people actually like it. It would take extra effort to remove it, and it also has come in handy for debugging.

Picom configuration abilities are coming We’re working on getting picom-conf into Lubuntu so you can configure it. We include it because it can help with desktop smoothness and enables at least one very handy feature of LXQt (panel transparency - without Picom or some other X compositor, this feature doesn’t work at all).

I’m not sure I personally would like to see two window managers in Lubuntu (xfwm4 and Openbox), since we try to keep it minimal and light. That being said, I have used xfwm4 with Lubuntu and liked it very much. I think Openbox is smaller though. Not sure.

Thanks for the feedback!

[Fritz]

You did not get my point about LXQt by Lubuntu. Ofcourse I know that LXQt is not made by Lubuntu.

Inside the Noble VM running on my daily driver (yeah, I’ve been watching too many videos on Youtube), I run Arch Linux with another LXQt implementation.

So, an alternative session descriptor name could be:

LXQt Desktop (running on a heavily modified Ubuntu)

That’s what it is, right. Just another LXQt implementation, albeit a very nice looking one (thanks to the Lubuntu artwork you guys have made available to the world).

Just another LXQt implementation. Nothing more, nothing less. In your case, running on Ubuntu with some parts missing, and some parts added.

I’ve always liked Lubuntu. I was not really fond about the last few releases (mostly but not only because of snaps). Noble seems to be heading the right direction again, and reconfirming my passion for your Lubuntu LXQt implementation.

As I said, for the purpose of testing the progress of Noble, I am running Lubuntu Noble inside Debian testing. And inside Noble, I am running another LXQt implementation on an Arch Linux VM.

Three different OS-es, three times the identical LXQt 1.4.0. I’ve installed the Lubuntu artwork on Debian and Arch, and the appearance, theming, fonts, cursors. Identical. Apart from the different window managers that came with the out of the box implementations, background etc. all three implementations look and feel exactly the same.

Well, the OS-es are different. My laptop with Debian trixie is running “Debian testing OS” on Linux kernel 6.5. Lubuntu Noble inside trixie is running a form of “Ubuntu OS” (but essentially Ubuntu) with kernel 6.6, and Arch testing is running “Arch” with kernel 6.7. Apart from the OS, the three desktops are identical for the untrained eye. Interchangeable.

IMHO it is time for you, the Lubuntu project, to think about the future. Excel at what you do, or find another niche (diversify), or the future could be bleak.

Do you have a mission statement anyway?
What comes to my mind are just a few keywords: accessible, easy, deliver, simple, stable, appealing, available, functional, predictable and innovative. I think all of this applies at this moment to the next LTS. You’re almost there

About openbox en the other LXQt session in SDDM
This can be somewhat confusing for your customers. Do you really need to keep them? For debugging purposes one can always use Ctrl+Alt+F2, etc. I described already the quick win to get rid of the entries in SDDM.

KWin
Since I have been playing around with lots of desktop metaphores (other than LXQt) on my laptop, I’ve found out that KWin (part of the KDE Desktop)was still installed on my system. It is a nice window manager. I am using it now. KDE is way too heavy on my 200 Euro laptop, but KWin is OK. Not a noticeable lag. I like it.

Future
There are bends ahead. Wayland will dominate the desktop world soon. Qt6 is coming. The LXQt project is making the transition right now. LXQt seems feature complete, but I am expecting some innovations to the desktop as we know it in Lubuntu 25.04