Gtk+ has GNOME on the one hand, and Xfce on the other. Qt, on the other hand, only has KDE – there’s no lightweight, less encompassing alternative if KDE doesn’t float your boat, but you’d still want a Qt desktop. Luckily for you, there’s now Razor-qt, a small, lightweight and simple Qt desktop environment.

Razor-qt is not an entire desktop environment in the sense that KDE and GNOME are; most important, it is supposed to worked with an existing window manager. The Razor-qt developers prefer Openbox, but it can work with everything else, from Kwin to fvwm. For the rest, Razor-qt consists of modules, and you can mix and match them to suit your needs.

“Razor-qt is an advanced, easy-to-use, and fast desktop environment based on Qt technologies,” the project website reads, “It has been tailored for users who value simplicity, speed, and an intuitive interface. Unlike most desktop environments, Razor-qt also works fine with weak machines.”

Since it’s a relatively new open source project, they’re also looking for help. “Razor-qt is a new open-source project and you can help us improve it. We welcome your bug reports and suggestions; you are free to translate all into your own language, create more attractive graphics, anything,” the team states.

This is a very interesting project, and I’d love for it to pick up more steam. It’s pretty easy to get it running on your Linux installation, so get cracking!