When comparing LXQT vs Lumina, the Slant community recommends LXQT for most people. In the question“What are the best UNIX-like Desktop Environments for everyday users?” LXQT is ranked 8th while Lumina is ranked 17th. The most important reason people chose LXQT is:
By taking advantage of the modular KDE Frameworks, LXQT is able to offer a modular architecture that allows the user to easily swap components.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Modular
By taking advantage of the modular KDE Frameworks, LXQT is able to offer a modular architecture that allows the user to easily swap components.
Pro Lightweight emphasis
With a focus on being "light-weight", it is to KDE Plasma what XFCE is to GNOME: a familiar enough looking lighter alternative to the more fully featured environment that may work better on lower-end devices and for people who want as lean a system as possible.
Pro Beautiful GUI using Qt.
Pro Great for old and low-end devices
LXQt is unparalleled in its ability to run on the weakest of machines without a problem.
Pro Utilizes Qt
As the name suggests, LXQt takes advantage of the Qt ecosystem to provide a beautiful and performant user experience.
Pro Doesn't use GTK3
Pro Doesn't use GTK3
Pro Does not depend on toolkits
The desktop works without Systemd, ConsoleKit, PolicyKit or even D-Bus.
Pro OpenSource with no copyrights
The whole desktop is licensed under 3-clause BSD license which gives you complete freedom for any reuse
Pro Lightweight
It's fast and responsive.
Pro No dconf or gconf
All desktop configuration files are simple plain-text files on the back-end.
Pro Filemanager Insight fully supports ZFS
As it was initially developed for BSD-systems its file manager "Insight" supports the advanced ZFS features other Unix file managers misses.
Pro Qt-based
A Qt-based desktop.
Pro Modular
Since there are no toolkits all applications are just GUIs to common *NIX applications.
Pro Easy to configure
Pro Completely customizable
Cons
Con Poor file manager
pcmanfm-qt is lightyears behind its GTK version.
Con Very limited in customization
Very few themes available, especially modern themes.
Con Ugly
Con Multiple application sources
Which leads to an inconsistent desktop.
Con Not a full desktop environment
Like LXDE or Xfce it is not a full desktop envirnment and is missing many utilities that need to be borrowed from other desktops which will bloat the desktop.
Con UHD screens hardly supported
DPI settings are not adopted. The readability, usability of this DE on UHD screens is not advisable. Fonts are not scaled at all.
Con Unthemeable for usual users
As all Qt desktop environments themeing is hard since you need to know C++ , there is a sideway using qss however its not as powerful as GTK, Enlightenment or Windows theming.
Con Depends too much on KDE
Even the programs/apps shipped with LXQt are from the KDE project. They don't have their own projects yet.
It's pretty similar to Budgie that depends on Gnome for almost everything.
Con Pcmanfm-qt needs gvfs
you can mount drives with mount, but pcmanfm uses gnomes gvfs to mount drives.
Con Missing Features = Lightweight
For the LXQT developers, lightweight is a synonym for missing features.
Con A lot of bugs
This is a very disappointing desktop environment, it's very buggy. Although there still is hope that these issues will be resolved.
Con Not quite ready for open deployment
In the current state, LXQT is a beta desktop that feels like a heavy alpha. A lot of the tools and underlying features are in a testing state, while the LXQT project itself has not had a gold (1.0.0) release as of yet.
Con Poor support by distributors
It is unavailable from the most distributions so you have to build it from source.
Con Not really beautiful
Functionality comes first.
Con Unthemeable for usual users
As all Qt desktop environments themeing is hard since you need to know C++. There is a workaround using qss, however, it's not as powerful as GTK/CSS, Enlightenment or Windows theming.