SparkyLinux is a desktop-oriented operating system based on the Debian operating system. The project offers a ready-to-use operating system with various desktops to choose from. SparkyLinux is released 3-4 times per year to provide the latest versions of all applications.
History
The project was born in October 2011 as an Ubuntu remix with Enlightenment as the default desktop having the name ue17r (Ubuntu Enlightenment17 Remix). After a few months of testing, the base system was changed to Debian and renamed SparkyLinux.2
Features
SparkyLinux has two main "flavors": the "stable flavor", which is based on the latest Debian stable, and the “rolling flavor”, which is based on the testing (next stable) branch of Debian and uses a (semi-)rolling-release cycle. Additionally, it includes a collection of tools and scripts to help users with easy administration of the system.3
The default desktop environments are LXQt (former LXDE), MATE, Xfce, and KDE, but users can install other desktops via 'Sparky APTus'.
As Sparky ISO image features a few proprietary packages, the 'Sparky APTus' provides a small tool called 'Non-Free Remover' which can easily uninstall all 'contrib' and 'non-free' packages from the system.4
Since 2023, the project has offered storage persistence from a utility that writes USB disk images. The feature so far only works on the MinimalGUI version of SparkyLinux.5
Special editions
- GameOver Edition, targeted to gamers. It features a large set of free and open-source games and some needed tools.
- Rescue Edition, provides a live system and a large number of applications for recovering broken operating systems.
- Multimedia for audio, video, and HTML pages editing.
- MinimalCLI and MinimalGUI.6
See also
- Free and open-source software portal
- Linux portal
Further reading
- Fagioli, Brian (8 July 2014). "SparkyLinux 3.4 GameOver -- a Linux distro for gamers". BetaNews. Retrieved 2022-03-12.
- Gayan (11 October 2014). "SparkyLinux 3.5 (E18) Review – Lightweight, Comes with Lots of Apps, But a Bit Buggy". Hectic Geek. Archived from the original on 2018-08-14. Retrieved 2022-03-12.
- Germain, Jack M. (20 August 2014). "SparkyLinux GameOver Is a Winning Work-Play Combo". LinuxInsider. Retrieved 2022-03-12.
- Kanoy, Michael D. (30 September 2014). "SparkyLinux: Low Resource OS Packing Dynamite!". Reach Unlimited. Archived from the original on 2015-04-02. Retrieved 2022-03-12.
- Newell, Gary (26 November 2013). "Everyday Linux User review of SparkyLinux 3.1 Razor-Qt Edition". Everyday Linux User. Retrieved 2022-03-12.
- Newell, Gary (October 2014). "An Everyday Linux User Review Of SparkyLinux Gameover Edition". Everyday Linux User. Retrieved 2022-03-12.
- Smith, Jesse (18 February 2013). "First look at SparkyLinux 2.1 "Ultra" edition". DistroWatch Weekly. No. 495. Retrieved 2022-03-12.
- Smith, Jesse (20 October 2014). "SparkyLinux 3.5". DistroWatch Weekly. No. 581. Retrieved 2022-03-12.
- Watson, J. A. (July 21, 2017). "Hands-on with Sparky Linux 5, powered by Debian". ZDNet. Retrieved 2022-03-12.
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to SparkyLinux.References
"SparkyLinux Wiki". Sparky Wiki. https://wiki.sparkylinux.org/doku.php ↩
pavroo (13 October 2021). "ue17r". ArchiveOS. Retrieved 12 March 2025. https://archiveos.org/ue17r/ ↩
pavroo (18 December 2024). "About". SparkyLinux. Retrieved 12 March 2025. https://sparkylinux.org/about/ ↩
pavroo (20 September 2023). "Sparky APTus". SparkyLinux. Retrieved 12 March 2025. https://sparkylinux.org/sparky-aptus/ ↩
pavroo (20 January 2023). "Sparky 2023.01 + Persistence". SparkyLinux. Retrieved 2023-02-05. https://sparkylinux.org/sparky-2023-01-persistence/ ↩
pavroo (18 December 2024). "About". SparkyLinux. Retrieved 12 March 2025. https://sparkylinux.org/about/ ↩