The Sparky team has released version 8.2, the second quarterly update in the “Seven Sisters” series based on Debian 13 “Trixie”, including all package updates from the Debian and Sparky stable repositories as of February 14, 2026.
This release uses Linux 6.12.69 LTS as the main kernel. Additionally, other versions, such as 6.12.72 LTS, 6.6.125-LTS, and 6.19.1, are available in the Sparky repositories for users who prefer a different kernel.
Desktop environments have been updated to match the Debian 13 base. The KDE edition comes with KDE Plasma 6.3.6. Other editions include LXQt 2.1, MATE 1.26, Xfce 4.20, and Openbox 3.6.1. A minor bug in the Openbox edition that prevented the terminal emulator from launching from the package manager has been fixed.
Core applications are updated as well. This release features LibreOffice 25.2.3, Firefox 140.7 ESR (with Firefox 147 available in the Sparky repositories), and Thunderbird 140.7 ESR.
Sparky 8.2 ISO images are available for amd64 systems with BIOS/UEFI and Secure Boot support. You can choose from Xfce, LXQt, MATE, KDE Plasma, MinimalGUI (Openbox), and MinimalCLI editions. For ARM64, images are offered in Openbox and CLI versions.
If you already use Sparky 8, you do not need to reinstall. A regular system upgrade will get you the latest packages.
Finally, there is a known issue with ARM64 images where Wi-Fi might not work after the first boot. Restarting the system will automatically enable wireless connectivity.
For more information, see the release announcement.
