Debian LXQt
On November 13 2018, after discovering that LXDE is moving up to LXQt and ran some technical analysis between them, I decided to move up to LXQt environment due to the following reasons:
- It is actively being developed by the now merged LXDE and Razor-qt teams
- LXDE is deprecated
- That extra 17Mb memory consumption is okay in exchange for (A LOT) of new features
- Simple to setup, understand, learn, and use
- Qt engine is primarily used in embedded system
I chosen LXQt mainly due to my attitude towards simplicity and minimal install. As we all know, battery and hardware are still limited to hours so I want to squeeze more productive output than fancy user interface. LXQt is well known for low resources interface among others.
After testing on Debian, there are a large number of setups to do before it can achieves the almost same user experience as Ubuntu. The guides within this section are all related to Debian Stable.
The things about Debian LXQt...
Very Stable
Unlike Ubuntu variant, Debian stable branch is very simple and stable. The minimal install still comes with bloatwares but it is still manageable. There are a lot of similarities between Ubuntu and Debian and you can spot what are the originals, what got improved by the Ubuntu team.
Wifi-Bluetooth Network Card is Painful
Ubuntu has a +1 in this area. The wifi-bluetooth enabling in Debian9 LXQt was a painful journey due to the non-free firmware. It took me hours just to stabilize the devices and network.
Debian9 does pack the firmware together but I believe the firmware is not performing as expected. Hence, it needs more steps to stabilize it.
Clean and Tidy
Unlike Ubuntu, Debian is very clean (as in, system, repository etc.). You don't need to wonder around to figure what magics is behind the libraries and codes.
Snapd Are Your Friends
Since we're discouraged to use build FrankenDebian, you'll seriously need to rely on Snapd to get some of your container-ed software. A lot of Debian original software in this stable branch are very outdated, not limited to: Firefox, Atom editor (luckily mine is vim), vlc, etc.
All those software are downloadable via Snapd.
Debian9 Stretch LXDE Tweak Compatible
Every tweak I did in my Debian9 Stretch LXDE is compatible for Debian 9 Stretch LXQt. Hence, you can safely applies those tweaks into LXQt system. Moving forward, I will only use pure LXQT.
Getting Started
This section is about getting started to install Debian operating system. It includes security hardening articles just in case one needs it setup one.
Repository Post-Setup Configurations
This section covers all the post-setup configurations.
SSH
Firmware and Non-Free
This section covers all non-free packages such as firmware and proprietary drivers.
That's all for Debian 9 LXQt installation.