ALT Linux LXQt is an open source distribution of Linux derived from the Mandrake operating system, which was later known as Mandriva and now forked into OpenMandriva, and using the lighweight LXQt desktop environment.
Availability, boot options, supported architectures
The LXQt edition of ALT Linux is available for download as two Live CD ISO images that must be burned onto CD discs or written to USB flash drives of 1GB or higher capacity in order to boot them from the BIOS of a PC or laptop that supports either the 64-bit or 32-bit hardware platform.
When booting from the bootable medium, the user will be prompted by a boot loader with several options, such as the ability to start the live environment with default options (LiveCD) or in persistent mode (LiveCD with sessions support), as well as to boot from the first disk and run a memory test.
The second Linux distribution with LXQt
In the LXQt review we’ve mentioned the fact that more and more lightweight Linux distributions will adopt the LXQt desktop environment, replacing the deprecated LXDE and Razor-qt ones. Therefore, ALT Linux is the second distro to adopt the LXQt project as its default desktop environment.
LXQt uses a clean and familiar setup comprised of a single taskbar located on the bottom edge of the screen from where the user can access the main menu and launch applications, as well as to interact with running programs and cycle between virtual desktops.
Default applications include the PCManFM-Qt file manager, JuffEd text editor, LXImage image viewer, FatRat download manager, Mozilla Firefox and QupZilla web browsers, qBittorrent torrent downloader, Psi+ chat client, FocusWriter word processor, Clementine audio player, SMPlayer video player, and Tubularix puzzle game.
Bottom line
Summing up, ALT Linux LXQt is a decent distribution of Linux designed from the ground up to be as smooth and low on resources as possible, as well as to showcase the LXQt desktop environment.
