When comparing KDE vs LXQT, the Slant community recommends KDE for most people. In the question“What are the best UNIX-like desktop environments for convertible laptops?” KDE is ranked 11th while LXQT is ranked 13th. The most important reason people chose KDE is:
There are many customization options and possibilities to tweak the desktop, including widgets.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Highly customisable
There are many customization options and possibilities to tweak the desktop, including widgets.
Pro Integrated components
Plasma Desktop generally comes packaged with a full set of applications to get users started, including a file manager (Dolphin), advanced file manager and browser (Konqueror), image and document viewers (Gwenview, Okular), the Calligra office suite, CD and DVD authoring (K3b) and dozens more. The desktop can be installed and used without these applications, but they add significant value for many people.
Pro Looks beautiful
The design of the three built-in desktop themes; Air, Breeze, and Oxygen, are very beautiful to some.
Pro Open source
Pro Has a file manager that provides a good balance between power and simplicity
Included file manager provides several icon, list and detail views to choose from along with features such as tabs, bookmarks, tagging, previews and metadata, network file access, bluetooth file transfers to/from devices and excellent removable storage integration while remaining fast and easy to use.
Pro Integrated advanced search
Plasma Desktop comes with an integration search system that makes it easy to find local files, emails, contacts, events and more. The file manager supports tagging and rating files as well as full-content searching and the KRunner command window and the Milou desktop widget makes searching for files, emails, applications and other content by name, subject, category, tag, fulltext, etc. very simple. It does this with essentially no noticeable interference with day-to-day usage of the computer, thanks to the scheduling built into the backend system (Baloo).
Pro Uses the Logo key (aka Windows key) for menu functionaly
Logo key is used for features such as the "start" menu, which will be familiar to migrating Windows users
Pro Keyboard friendly
Nearly all actions can be driven with keyboard commands. Window management, including effects such as desktop overviews, can be triggered with a keyboard control (or mouse gesture) and some even support filtering results (such as windows shown) by typing. The KRunner tool (default keybinding: Alt+F2 or Alt+Space) provides searching local files, online sources, unit conversions, math and more all from a keyboard driven interface.
Pro KDE is an evolution on the classic desktop model
KDE 4 is a great evolution on the classic Win95/Gnome/XFCE approach. It's moving in innovative directions while respecting the classic metaphors.
Pro Active development
Pro The session manager works perfectly
This is a much better session manager compared to solutions from other Linux desktop environments.
Pro Bunch of coherent applications
What make plasma so nice is the galaxy of apps, sharing same look and feel, configuration and behaviour.
Pro Adheres to standards
Standards adherence allows for interoperability and shared technology for X Window System desktops, with similar Wayland support being worked on. Applications not written with Plasma in mind work very well in Plasma as a result. The development team has also been instrumental in standard creation and adoption such as NETWM, X11 clipboard, icon themes, mimetype handling, application menu standardization, system tray protocols and notifications and more.
Pro Multi-Device "Convergence"
Plasma Desktop provides seamless "zero config" integration of your Android device with your laptop and desktop machines via KDE Connect. Phone calls, SMS messages, cross-device copy and paste, media remote control, cursor control and more are supported.
The technology that Plasma Desktop is built on, simply called "Plasma", also provides interfaces for phones, tablets, netbooks, and media centers in addition to the desktop. These additional interfaces use the same underlying frameworks and therefore work well together and have a unified feel to them. They also support a common set of applications across them which adapt to the input methods and screen sizes.
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
Cons
Con Perceived clunkyness and slowness
Compared to other options, KDE is still perceived slow. Especially, the desktop takes a few seconds to login.
Mouse pointer can feel sluggish, or laggy, on older systems
Con KDE is awesome but it is overcomplicated for newbies for sure
Way too many options for newbies to digest before the learning curve is over.
Con Interfaces are inconsistent and ugly in 4.x
While parts of KDE in 4.x can be very good looking, a common opinion is that the style is too hobbled together with inconsistent icons and styles clashing with each other.
Con HiDPI support is spotty
The log in screen as well as some other components of the OS do not scale properly under HIDPI. Everything in the log in screen will be displayed too small, as well as some areas of the OS.
Con Stability problems
Under certain conditions, most of KDE's components can be highly sensitive to race conditions, which leads to KDE applications frequently crashing, and, on rare occasion, kdeinit itself locking up.
Con Poorly named app menu with too many apps starting with "K"
This is better in KDE Neon with minimalist apps, which indeed in itself points out the problem.
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.