Install LXQt on Fedora 45 / 44: X11 and Wayland Sessions

One dnf command puts two LXQt sessions on the Fedora login screen, one on X11 and one on Wayland. On our test machine neither of them started the desktop portal until we added a small systemd unit. LXQt itself is fine on Fedora 45. It is light, fast, and on a VM it idled at a bit over half the memory GNOME used. The rough edges are all in the session plumbing around it, and that is what this guide spends most of its time on.

Original content from computingforgeeks.com - post 74917

The steps below install the LXQt desktop environment on Fedora Workstation next to GNOME and log in through GDM. They cover the difference between the X11 session and the Wayland session that runs on Miriway by default, and how to switch the Wayland compositor to labwc. They also cover the configuration tools and the fix for the portal service that fails in both sessions. For a new machine, start with the Fedora 45 installation guide and the post-install checklist. Everything here was run on a Fedora 45 Workstation with LXQt 2.4.0, and the Fedora 44 package set was checked against its repositories.

LXQt package groups on Fedora

Fedora ships LXQt as an environment group and a smaller desktop group inside it. The numbers come from --assumeno dry runs on a stock Fedora 45 Workstation:

Group	What it adds	Packages on Workstation
@lxqt-desktop-environment	The LXQt desktop plus Xorg, fonts, multimedia, printing, input methods and the other base groups	212 (903 MiB)
@lxqt-desktop	LXQt, Openbox, SDDM, PCManFM-Qt, QTerminal, Falkon and the Miriway Wayland session	188 (734 MiB)

Both groups pull in SDDM, Openbox and Miriway. The full environment group is the one people search for and the one this guide uses. The Fedora LXQt Spin ISO installs the same environment on a clean disk with SDDM as the login screen.

Install LXQt on Fedora Workstation

Install the environment group:

sudo dnf5 install -y @lxqt-desktop-environment

The group’s initial-setup-gui pulls in anaconda-gui and upgrades the installed anaconda-core, which is where the “remove 15 MiB” in the summary comes from (the old versions being replaced). dnf also cancels any offline update GNOME Software had already queued:

Warning: Pending offline transaction has been invalidated.
To reschedule, run: dnf5daemon-server
Complete!

Check the core packages:

rpm -q lxqt-session lxqt-panel lxqt-wayland-session miriway sddm openbox pcmanfm-qt qterminal

Fedora 45 installs LXQt 2.4 with Openbox for X11 and Miriway 26.08 for Wayland:

lxqt-session-2.4.0-3.fc45.x86_64
lxqt-panel-2.4.1-2.fc45.x86_64
lxqt-wayland-session-0.4.1-2.fc45.noarch
miriway-26.08-1.fc45.x86_64
sddm-0.21.0-16.fc45.x86_64
openbox-3.6.1-31.fc45.x86_64
pcmanfm-qt-2.4.1-1.fc45.x86_64
qterminal-2.4.0-2.fc45.x86_64

SDDM arrives but stays disabled, so GDM keeps running the login screen. Fedora Workstation ships without the Xorg server, and the group installs it for the X11 session. Confirm which display manager is active:

systemctl is-enabled gdm sddm

GDM is enabled and SDDM is not:

enabled
disabled

Leave it that way on a GNOME machine. GDM lists the LXQt sessions itself, so SDDM is only needed on machines without GNOME.

Log in to the LXQt X11 or Wayland session

Reboot so the greeter picks up the new session files (sudo systemctl restart gdm also works but ends every open graphical session). Click your user and open the gear icon before typing the password. The install adds three entries:

Menu entry	Session file	Starts
LXQt Desktop	/usr/share/xsessions/lxqt.desktop	startlxqt on Xorg, with Openbox as the window manager
LXQt (Wayland)	/usr/share/wayland-sessions/lxqt-wayland.desktop	startlxqtwayland, which launches the configured compositor (Miriway by default)
Openbox	/usr/share/xsessions/openbox.desktop	Bare Openbox with no panel

GDM on Fedora 45 still starts X11 sessions for other desktops through gdm-x-session, even though GNOME itself is Wayland only. On the X11 login, the process list shows exactly that:

pgrep -a -u "$USER" -f 'lxqt|Xorg|openbox|pcmanfm' | cut -c1-100

GDM launches Xorg on the session’s VT, and Openbox and the LXQt modules run on top (list trimmed):

2084 /usr/libexec/gdm-x-session startlxqt
2092 /usr/libexec/Xorg vt2 -displayfd 3 -auth /run/user/1000/gdm/Xauthority -background none -norese
2121 lxqt-session
2186 /usr/bin/openbox
2195 /usr/bin/pcmanfm-qt --desktop --profile=lxqt
2199 /usr/bin/lxqt-globalkeysd
2203 /usr/bin/lxqt-panel

The first X11 login lands on Fedora’s wallpaper with desktop icons and a single panel along the bottom:

The Fedora logo at the left end of the panel opens the application menu. It has a search field, category lists, and direct entries for LXQt Settings and Leave:

Configure LXQt from the Configuration Center

Every LXQt setting has its own small tool, and lxqt-config gathers them in one window. Open it from the menu under LXQt Settings, or run lxqt-config from a terminal. Each icon opens one of the individual tools:

Appearance holds the Qt widget style, icon theme, LXQt theme, fonts, cursor and GTK style. Fedora defaults to the Fusion widget style and the Clearlooks LXQt theme. The LXQt Theme page lists the bundled themes with a preview of each panel:

Picking Dark and clicking Apply recolours the panel and Qt apps at once. The choice lands in ~/.config/lxqt/lxqt.conf as theme=dark, which is the file to copy if you set up several machines the same way. With the dark theme active, PCManFM-Qt and QTerminal pick it up without a restart:

fastfetch is not installed by default. Add it and it reports the session the way LXQt sees it:

sudo dnf5 install -y fastfetch
fastfetch --logo none -s OS:Kernel:DE:WM:Memory

LXQt 2.4.0 on Openbox under X11:

OS: Fedora Linux 45 (Workstation Edition Prerelease) x86_64
Kernel: Linux 7.2.7-300.fc45.x86_64
Desktop Environment: LXQt 2.4.0
Window Manager: Openbox 3.6.1 (X11)
Memory: 1.28 GiB / 7.72 GiB (17%)

Two things in the X11 session caught us out. Monitor settings asks “Are the current settings OK for you?” with a countdown after a change, so click Yes before the timer runs out. And xrandr is not part of the group, so scripts that call it fail with xrandr: command not found until you run sudo dnf5 install -y xrandr.

The LXQt Wayland session on Miriway

Choose LXQt (Wayland) at the login screen for the Wayland session. Fedora sets Miriway, a Mir-based compositor, as the default through the lxqt-wayland-session-default-compositor-miriway package. The panel, desktop and apps are the same LXQt components, now running as Wayland clients under miriway-shell:

A few differences from X11 show up quickly. The pager shows one workspace instead of four. The resolution is not set through Monitor settings but through Miriway’s own file, ~/.config/miriway-shell.display-config, which Miriway writes on first login with every mode the screen supports listed in comments. Change the mode: line under the default layout and log in again. On our VM this switched the first layout from 1024×768 to 1920×1080:

sed -i '0,/mode: [email protected]/s//mode: [email protected]/' ~/.config/miriway-shell.display-config

Session Settings also shows Global Keyboard Shortcuts as the one LXQt module that is not running under Wayland, and lxqt-globalkeysd was absent from the process list. Plan on setting keyboard shortcuts in the compositor’s configuration for this session:

Switch the Wayland compositor to labwc

The compositor is a setting, not a fixed part of the session. Fedora 45 packages LXQt session files for labwc, niri, river, Sway and Wayfire as lxqt-<compositor>-session. The Wayland Settings page in Session Settings only lists compositors that are installed, so on a default install the drop-down offers Miriway alone:

labwc is a stacking compositor modelled on Openbox, so it feels closest to the X11 session. Install its session package:

sudo dnf5 install -y lxqt-labwc-session

Reopen Session Settings, pick labwc under Wayland Settings, and close the window. LXQt warns that “Some settings will not take effect until the next log in” and writes the choice to ~/.config/lxqt/session.conf. The whole file after the change:

[General]
__userfile__=true
compositor=labwc

[Environment]
GTK_CSD=0
GTK_OVERLAY_SCROLLING=0
MIRIWAY_SYSTEM_LOCALE1_KEYMAP=1

Log out and back into LXQt (Wayland), then check which compositor is running:

pgrep -a labwc

labwc now runs the session, pointed at LXQt’s own labwc config directory:

16289 labwc -C /home/sysadmin/.config/lxqt/labwc -S lxqt-session

Setting compositor=miriway in the same file switches back.

Fix “Dependency failed for xdg-desktop-portal.service”

This is the one problem worth fixing on every Fedora LXQt install. After a clean login, in the X11 session and on Miriway alike, the user journal showed the desktop portal refusing to start:

journalctl --user -b -u xdg-desktop-portal --no-pager | tail -2

The job fails on a dependency rather than crashing:

Sep 28 22:10:13 fedora-ws01 systemd[21774]: Dependency failed for xdg-desktop-portal.service - Portal service.
Sep 28 22:10:13 fedora-ws01 systemd[21774]: xdg-desktop-portal.service: Job xdg-desktop-portal.service/start failed with result 'dependency'.

Qt apps then log qt.qpa.services: Failed to register with host portal. Anything that relies on the portal, such as Flatpak file dialogs and links opened from sandboxed apps, has nothing to talk to. The cause is in the unit file: xdg-desktop-portal.service declares Requisite=graphical-session.target, and the LXQt session never starts that target. It stays inactive, and starting it by hand is refused:

systemctl --user start graphical-session.target

systemd rejects the request:

Failed to start graphical-session.target: Operation refused, unit graphical-session.target may be requested by dependency only (it is configured to refuse manual start/stop).

The fix is a user target that binds to graphical-session.target, started from LXQt’s autostart. Workstation ships only vi from vim-minimal, so install full vim (or use nano), then create the target:

sudo dnf5 install -y vim-enhanced
mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user ~/.config/autostart
vim ~/.config/systemd/user/lxqt-session.target

Add these lines:

[Unit]
Description=LXQt session
BindsTo=graphical-session.target
Wants=graphical-session-pre.target
After=graphical-session-pre.target

Then the autostart entry, which also passes the display variables to the systemd user manager so the portal can reach the session:

vim ~/.config/autostart/lxqt-graphical-session.desktop

Paste the entry:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Start graphical-session.target
Exec=sh -c "dbus-update-activation-environment --systemd WAYLAND_DISPLAY DISPLAY XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP XDG_SESSION_TYPE && systemctl --user start lxqt-session.target"
OnlyShowIn=LXQt;
X-LXQt-Need-Tray=false

Reload the user manager, then log out and back in:

systemctl --user daemon-reload

On the next login all three units come up. We checked this on clean logins in the X11 session and in the Miriway session. With no LXQt portal backend installed, the portal falls back to the GTK backend for file dialogs; xdg-desktop-portal-lxqt is in the Fedora repositories for Qt dialogs, but we did not test it:

systemctl --user is-active lxqt-session.target graphical-session.target xdg-desktop-portal.service

Each unit reports active:

active
active
active

One trap when testing this: if an SSH session or another login keeps your systemd user manager alive, graphical-session.target can stay active from an earlier GNOME or fixed LXQt login. Everything then looks healthy without the fix. Test after a reboot, or after loginctl terminate-user "$USER" (which also closes your SSH sessions), to see the real behaviour.

LXQt on Fedora 45 vs Fedora 44

Both releases carry LXQt 2.4 and the same Wayland session design, including Miriway as the default compositor in the lxqt-desktop group. The Fedora 44 column comes from its repositories, not from a test session:

Package	Fedora 45	Fedora 44
lxqt-session	2.4.0-3	2.4.0-2
lxqt-panel	2.4.1-2	2.4.1-1
lxqt-wayland-session	0.4.1-2	0.4.1-1
miriway	26.08	26.01
Default Wayland compositor	Miriway	Miriway

The LXQt packages themselves are rebuilds of the same releases, while Miriway moved from 26.01 to 26.08. The commands in this guide should carry over to Fedora 44; they were checked against its repositories, not run there. The Fedora 44 to 45 upgrade guide covers moving an existing machine.

Memory use: LXQt vs GNOME on the same machine

The reason most people install LXQt is resources, so we measured it. Same VM (4 vCPUs, 8 GiB RAM), same user, a fresh login into each session. We waited about 30 seconds, dropped the page cache, and read the “used” column from free -m:

Session	Used memory after login
LXQt Desktop (X11, Openbox)	1,218 MiB
LXQt (Wayland, Miriway)	1,376 MiB
GNOME 51 (Wayland)	2,263 MiB

These are single readings on a Workstation install that still carries GNOME’s background services such as PackageKit, so treat them as the right order of magnitude rather than a benchmark. LXQt used a little over half of GNOME’s footprint, and the X11 session ran about 160 MiB lighter than Wayland. On an older laptop or a small VM, that gap is the difference between swapping and not. If a tiling layout suits you better, Sway on Fedora is the other lightweight option on the same base, and the GNOME Tweaks guide covers the GNOME side of the same machine.