Window Managers (X11)

LXQt does not provide its own window manager but any arbitrary window manager can be used, most notably Openbox, KWin (the window manager of KDE), and Xfwm4 (the window manager of Xfce).

The current window manager is stored in section [General] of file session.conf.

[General]
[...]
window_manager=xfwm4
[...]

It can be chosen in configuration dialogue LXQt Session Settings of lxqt-session.

Known Window Managers

Listed in /usr/share/lxqt/windowmanagers.conf shipped by LXQt Session and if installed are shown in Session Settings > Window Manager. Window manager not listed can be set by their path.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Window manager related shortcuts (raise/lower, maximize/minimize, desktop and window switching and else) are handled by their configuration and not by lxqt-globalkeys. Therefore conflicts are possible, some of them will be notified at session startup. Avoiding identical shortcuts is recommended.

Note

Assigning Super_L ("Windows" or "Meta" key) for opening the main menu in the panel or switching keyboard layout may conflict eventually with the use of this key as a modifier, disabling eventually some of the default keybindings in the window manager in use.

Compositor

For desktop effects, shadows, transparency and else a compositor has to be enabled. Kwin and Xfwm4 provide their own compositor, for openbox or other Window Managers picom can be used.

A configuration tool for picom is: picom.conf.

Openbox

Configuration is handled by a configuration file rc.xml, the user specific copy of which is normally found in ~/.config/openbox/.

Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts can only be changed, added or removed editing directly ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml

KWin

The KWin configuration is stored in ~/.config/kwinrc. Note that the KDE Plasma concepts for window management differ from Xorg de-facto standard concepts. Therefore the integration with LXQt is not always straight forward.

The only GUI to configure KWin in LXQt sessions is KDE's System Settings. Unfortunately this represents a drawback of using KWin as part of KDE Plasma is needed to get this to work reasonably in LXQt sessions. A minimal working setup to configure KWin can be achieved by installing systemsettings kitemmodels plasma-workspace.

An essential custom menu entry for kwin can be installed from here.

Shortcuts

KDE stores keyboard shortcuts in the ~/.config/kglobalshortcutsrc configuration file. The GUI can be installed separately, but requires the complete plasma-desktop package.

[!NOTE] Kwin version 6.* does not start kglobalacceld automatically anymore, adding /usr/lib/kglobalacceld in LXQt Session Settings > Autostart is needed.

Issues

Show Desktop

KWin does not distinguish PcManFm-Qt windows from the desktop which is drawn by PcManFm-Qt. Eventually open file manager windows will therefore not be minimized but only blurred. To have "Show Desktop" fully working following steps are necessary: * In lxqt-globalshortcuts "Show Desktop" keybinding is disabled * No "Show Desktop" plugin on any panel * In KDE Systemsettings > Window Managment > KWin Scripts "MinimizeAll" is activated * In KDE Systemsettings > Shortcuts searching for "MinimizeAll" a shortcut is set

In ~/.config/kglobalshortcutsrc:

...
MinimizeAll=Alt+D,none,MinimizeAll
...

With xdotool a "Show Desktop" button on the panel can be created by adding the "Custom Command" plugin, set xdotool key "alt+d" (if shortcut is Alt D) as left click command, icon desktop.svg and unset all other settings.

Font of titlebar

The settings in ~/.config/kdeglobals are not respected outside of Plasma. The only way to change the titlebar font is using breeze-enhanced instead of breeze in KDE settings.

Xfwm4

Three tools are provided to configure this window manager.
* Window Manager: Basic settings. Binary xfwm4-settings, desktop entry file xfce-wm-settings.desktop. * Window Manager Tweaks: Additional / advanced settings. Binary xfwm4-tweaks-settings, desktop entry file xfce-wmtweaks-settings.desktop. * Workspaces: Configures the virtual desktops. Binary xfwm4-workspace-settings, desktop entry file xfce-workspaces-settings.desktop.

[!NOTE] All desktop entry files mentioned above have by default key OnlyShowIn=XFCE; and will thus not be visible in LXQt sessions including the panel's main menu. In order to use these desktop entry files in LXQt sessions remove this line either in the system copy of the files, normally in /usr/share/applications/, or in a user specific copy which has to be placed in ~/.local/share/applications/ most of the time. The latter is the preferred solution as it won't be overwritten by updates: ``` mkdir ~/.local/share/applications cp /usr/share/applications/xfce-w* ~/.local/share/applications

[!NOTE] Those files ready for use can be installed from here. ```

Shortcuts

Shortcuts can be modified in Preferences > Window Manager > Keyboard , binary xfwm4-settings.

Other Window Manager

A comprehensive list can be found in the Arch Wiki.