Sparky is a fast, lightweight, and fully customizable OS built on Debian that offers a few versions for different users and tasks. One of the distribution’s distinguishing features is that it provides versions based on both the stable (SparkyLinux Stable) and test (SparkyLinux Semi-Rolling) branches of Debian.
The SparkyLinux 6.4 ‘Stable’ version features ISOs with three different desktop environments – LXQt, Xfce, and KDE. At the same time, the distro ‘Semi-Rolling’ version, which is based on Debian’s testing branch, features more up-to-date packages and comes with the same desktop environments as their ‘Stable’ version plus MATE desktop environment added.
Three months after the previous 6.3 release, the SparkyLinux team announced the general availability of the latest stable release – SparkyLinux 6.4. This release includes updated bundled applications and various improvements. With that said, let’s quickly look at what’s new.
SparkyLinux 6.4 Highlights
Powered by the Linux kernel 5.10, SparkyLinux 6.4 comes with updated packages from the Debian 11 “Bullseye” repository as of August 11, 2022, so you are supposed to get a lot of improvements.
As we noted, SparkyLinux 6.4 ships with Linux kernel 5.10, a Long Term Supported (LTS) version. The kernel developers have plans to maintain kernel 5.10 LTS up to 2026. On top of that, the SparkyLinux unstable repositories also offer the Linux Kernel versions 5.19.1 and 5.15.60-ESR.
Firefox 91.11.0.0esr is the default browser on SparkyLinux 6.4. In addition, you can also install the most recent Firefox versions, 103.0.2 and 102.1.0esr, as they are present under the package names “firefox-sparky” and “firefox-esr-sparky,” respectively.
However, keep in mind that these Firefox versions use a different system for user profiles, so you must synchronize your bookmarks, passwords, and settings from your Mozilla account.
Moreover, with the latest release, you can also find updated application packages that include:
- LXQt 0.16.0
- KDE Plasma 5.20.5
- Xfce 4.16
- Openbox 3.6.1
- Thunderbird 91.10
- VLC 3.0.17
- LibreOffice 7.0.4
System reinstallation is not required if you’re already using SparkyLinux 6.x on your computer. You can upgrade to the latest SparkyLinux 6.4 release using the command shown below:
sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgradeYou can refer to the official announcement for detailed information about all changes in SparkyLinux 6.4.
Download
SparkyLinux 6.4 is available in the following flavors:
- amd64: LXQt, KDE Plasma, Xfce, MinimalGUI (Openbox) & MinimalCLI (text mode)
- i686: LXQt, MinimalGUI (Openbox), and MinimalCLI (text mode)
- armhf: Openbox and CLI (text mode)
The new ISO images are available for download from the project website for SparkyLinux users who want to perform a fresh install. And last but not least, around mid-November, the next version, 6.5, is expected to be released.
