SparkyLinux Xfce

SparkyLinux Xfce is a custom edition of the well known SparkyLinux distribution, based on the stable branch of Debian/GNU Linux and built around the lightweight Xfce desktop environment. Other flavors of SparkyLinux include the E17 (Enlightenment), MATE, LXDE, Razor-Qt and Trinity desktop environments, a GameOver edition with numerous games, as well as a CLI (Command-Line Interface) version with basic utilities for advanced users who want to build their own Linux distribution.

Distributed as 32-bit and 64-bit Live DVDs

This edition of SparkyLinux is distributed as two Live DVD ISO images that can be easily installed or used as-is from either a USB flash drive or a blank DVD disc. Both are multilingual and support the 64-bit and 32-bit architectures.

It is available in multiple languages, including English, Polish, French, Swedish, German, Danish, Arabic, Slovak, Romanian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Czech, Spanish, Dutch, Hindi, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Portuguese, and Russian.

Boot options

If you want to use the Live DVD to boot an existing operating system or run a in-depth memory test, you can do so by using the included options from the boot menu. Additionally, if your graphics card is not supported by the default entry, you can choose to boot into safe graphics or text mode and start the graphical interface from there.

Xfce is in charge of the graphical session

As mentioned, the default desktop environment is provided by the Xfce project and it is bundled with all of its default utilities and tools, including the Thunar file manager, Galculator, Orange calendar, Xarchiver archive manager, Parcellite clipboard manager, and many others.

Default applications

Among some of the preinstalled applications, we can mention the Icedove and Iceweasel email and web browser clients, Liferea RSS aggregator, LibreOffice office suite, Pidgin instant messenger, Hotot Twitter client, Transmission torrent downloader, uGet download manager, gFTP FTP client, gThumb image viewer, and GIMP image editor.

Several multimedia application and utilities are also included in SparkyLinux Xfce, such as the Audacity audio editor, Avidemux video editor, DeVeDe DVD-Video creator, Camorama webcam viewer, Minitube YouTube client, VLC Media Player, Sound Converter, Radio Tray, and Exaile music player.

Bottom line

All in all, SparkyLinux Xfce proved to be a stable operating system, and due to the fact that it contains so many useful applications and utilities it can be used by anyone on a daily basis. It even supports low-end machines!

What is new in this release:

• full system upgrade from Debian testing repos as of December 17, 2017
• Linux kernel 4.14.2 from Debian Sid repos (4.14.8-sparky is available in Sparky ‘unstable' repo)
• Calamares 3.1.10 as the default system installer
• the full disk encryption option has been activated in the Calamares, so Sparky can be installed on an encrypted disk now
• added 8 new wallpapers of Polish nature to ‘sparky-artwork-nature' package added symlink of ‘sparkylinux-installer' to ‘sparky-installer' (Advanced Installer), and ‘spb' shortcut to ‘sparkybackup' command (backup tool)

What is new in version :

• full system upgrade from Debian testing repos as of December 17, 2017
• Linux kernel 4.14.2 from Debian Sid repos (4.14.8-sparky is available in Sparky ‘unstable' repo)
• Calamares 3.1.10 as the default system installer
• the full disk encryption option has been activated in the Calamares, so Sparky can be installed on an encrypted disk now
• added 8 new wallpapers of Polish nature to ‘sparky-artwork-nature' package added symlink of ‘sparkylinux-installer' to ‘sparky-installer' (Advanced Installer), and ‘spb' shortcut to ‘sparkybackup' command (backup tool)

What is new in version 4.6 / 5.1 Rolling:

• full system upgrade from Debian testing repos as of September 25, 2017
• Linux kernel 4.12.13 as default (4.13.3-sparky is available in Sparky ‘unstable' repo)
• gcc 6 removed from the live media; the default compiler is gcc 7
• obmenu-generator updated up to version 0.80 (MinmalGUI edition), what speeded up launching the menu with svg icons
• the default system installer Calamares updated up to version 3.1.4
• added new tool for installing a web browser: Sparky Web Browser Installer
• new desktop environment added to Sparky repos: Manokwari
• live system's memtest86+ issue has been fixed
• source code repos moved to GitHub

What is new in version 4.6 / 5.0 Rolling:

• full system upgrade from Debian 9 stable repos as of June 19, 2017
• Linux kernel 4.9.30 as default (4.10.x and 4.11.x available in Sparky ‘unstable' repo)
• added new repo (not active): wine-staging.com
• deep cleaning from old packages and files of older releases
• email client Icedove replaced by Thunderbird
• changed http to https protocol of all Sparky services, including repository; updating the ‘sparky-apt' package fixes it automatically
• new theme "Sparky5" which fixes look of gtk+ based applications
• added two new live system boot options:
• 1. toram lets you load the whole live system into RAM memory (if you have enough);
• 2. text mode if any problem with normal or failsafe boot, this option runs sparky in text mode and lets you install it using the advanced installer
• new tool for checking and displaying notification on your desktop about available updates

What is new in version 4.6:

• full system upgrade from Debian 9 stable repos as of June 19, 2017
• Linux kernel 4.9.30 as default (4.10.x and 4.11.x available in Sparky ‘unstable' repo)
• added new repo (not active): wine-staging.com
• deep cleaning from old packages and files of older releases
• email client Icedove replaced by Thunderbird
• changed http to https protocol of all Sparky services, including repository; updating the ‘sparky-apt' package fixes it automatically
• new theme "Sparky5" which fixes look of gtk+ based applications
• added two new live system boot options:
• 1. toram lets you load the whole live system into RAM memory (if you have enough);
• 2. text mode if any problem with normal or failsafe boot, this option runs sparky in text mode and lets you install it using the advanced installer
• new tool for checking and displaying notification on your desktop about available updates

What is new in version 4.5 / 4.6 RC:

• upcoming Debian stable Stretch ready
• Calamares installer with LUKS disabled; instead of the previous Live Installer (Advanced installer is still available)
• updated all packages from Debian Stretch and Sparky repositories
• many small improvements and bugs fixing
• deep cleaning to reduce iso images size

What is new in version 4.5:

• full system upgrade as of August 15, 2016
• Linux kernel 4.6.4 (4.7.1-sparky is available in Sparky repos, see howto)
• firefox 45.3.0.ESR (firefox 48 is available in Sparky repos)
• calamares is available (but not default yet) in our repos
• new default theme called ‘Numix-SX'
• added new desktops to MinimalISO and APTus: Lumina, Trinity and PekWM
• ‘tint2' panel replaced by ‘fbpanel' in the MinimalGUI iso images
• added ‘rootactions-servicemenu' to the Dolphin file manager in the KDE edition
• added short key which runs a terminal emulator in the MinimalGUI edition (Super+t)
• added an option which lets you install a PDF viewer, to the ‘sparky-office' tool
• Midori web browser replaced by NetSurf in the MinimalGUI edition
• the ‘sparky-firstrun' which lets you fully upgrade the system and install missing language packages has been fixed
• the ‘sparkylinux-installer' a part of ‘sparky-backup-core' tool refreshes package list itself and installs the latest desktop settings in the MinimalGUI and MinimalCLI editions
• added Vivaldi and NetSurf web browsers to Sparky repos
• improved Wiki pages

What is new in version 4.4:

• full system upgrade as of August 15, 2016
• Linux kernel 4.6.4 (4.7.1-sparky is available in Sparky repos, see howto)
• firefox 45.3.0.ESR (firefox 48 is available in Sparky repos)
• calamares is available (but not default yet) in our repos
• new default theme called ‘Numix-SX'
• added new desktops to MinimalISO and APTus: Lumina, Trinity and PekWM
• ‘tint2' panel replaced by ‘fbpanel' in the MinimalGUI iso images
• added ‘rootactions-servicemenu' to the Dolphin file manager in the KDE edition
• added short key which runs a terminal emulator in the MinimalGUI edition (Super+t)
• added an option which lets you install a PDF viewer, to the ‘sparky-office' tool
• Midori web browser replaced by NetSurf in the MinimalGUI edition
• the ‘sparky-firstrun' which lets you fully upgrade the system and install missing language packages has been fixed
• the ‘sparkylinux-installer' a part of ‘sparky-backup-core' tool refreshes package list itself and installs the latest desktop settings in the MinimalGUI and MinimalCLI editions
• added Vivaldi and NetSurf web browsers to Sparky repos
• improved Wiki pages

What is new in version 4.3:

What is new in version 4.2:

• full system upgrade from Debian testing repository as of December 15, 2015
• Linux kernel 4.2.0 (4.2.6)
• Enlightenment 0.20.0 (0.20.1 is available in our repos)
• KDE Plasma 5.4.3
• LXDE 0.99.0-2
• LXQt 0.10.0-2
• MATE 1.10.2
• Openbox 3.6.1-2
• Xfce 4.12.2
• Iceweasel 38.2.1esr
• Icedove 38.4
• LibreOffice 5.0.4 rc1
• Wine 1.8 rc3
• removed KDE/KWin based packages, the system uses Openbox window manager only and applications based on Qt and GTK libs (LXQt edition)
• a small issue which did not let loading the default Sparky wallpaper has been fixed (KDE 64 bit edition)
• the live-installer supports auto login via SDDM in the target system (KDE edition)
• due to removing a dependency from Debian testing repository for ‘mintstick' tool, it has been replaced by Sparky USB Live Creator, which is a GUI front-end to ‘dd', and another (new) tool Sparky USB Formatter
• ‘boot-repair' tool has been removed from iso images, but it is still available in the Sparky repository and on the iso images of the Sparky Rescue Edition
• ‘xfce4-mixer plugin' has been replaced by ‘pulseaudio-plugin' (Xfce edition)
• general cleaning and removing obsolete packages
• localizationing Sparky tools
• TOR Messenger - a multi messenger (IM), which uses the TOR network as default, is available in Sparky repository now
• removed all old Sparky wallpapers from the live iso images, and the default wallpapers has been slightly modified, depends of a Sparky edition
• added small application called "Sparky First Run"
• added ‘menulibre' package (Xfce edition)
• added new tool ‘obmenu-generator', which can generate a static or dynamic pipe menu and ‘xfdashboard' tool (Openbox edition)

What is new in version 4.1:

• full system upgrade from Debian testing repository as of 22/06/2015
• Linux kernel 4.0.5
• added support for the system installation on 32 bit machines with UEFI motherboard
• Razor-Qt Edition has been dropped
• added two new editions: KDE and LXQt
• system rebranding, see HowTo: http://sparkylinux.org/sparky-rebranding/
• new flat theme "Sparky4" and a set of icons "Ultra-Flat-Icons"
• added Pipelight repository and the public key
• Gnome-Alsamixer has been replaced by Pulse Audio Mixer (LXDE & LXQt editions)
• Mplayer2, Gnome-player and Gecko-player have been removed
• VLC is the default video player now
• added vlc-mozilla-plugin for Iceweasel
• Sparky APTus features a few new options:
• Liquorix kernel installation
• i686-pae kernel installation for 32 bit systems
• office suite installation (via ‘sparky-office' package):
• AbiWord & Gnumeric
• Calligra
• LibreOffice
• MS Office OnLine (Menu shortcuts)
• OpenOffice
• WPS Office

What is new in version 4.0:

• full system upgrade from Debian testing repository as of 22/06/2015
• Linux kernel 4.0.5
• added support for the system installation on 32 bit machines with UEFI motherboard
• Razor-Qt Edition has been dropped
• added two new editions: KDE and LXQt
• system rebranding, see HowTo: http://sparkylinux.org/sparky-rebranding/
• new flat theme "Sparky4" and a set of icons "Ultra-Flat-Icons"
• added Pipelight repository and the public key
• Gnome-Alsamixer has been replaced by Pulse Audio Mixer (LXDE & LXQt editions)
• Mplayer2, Gnome-player and Gecko-player have been removed
• VLC is the default video player now
• added vlc-mozilla-plugin for Iceweasel
• Sparky APTus features a few new options:
• Liquorix kernel installation
• i686-pae kernel installation for 32 bit systems
• office suite installation (via ‘sparky-office' package):
• AbiWord & Gnumeric
• Calligra
• LibreOffice
• MS Office OnLine (Menu shortcuts)
• OpenOffice
• WPS Office

What is new in version 3.6:

• improvements, such as:
• Linux kernel 3.16.0-4 (3.16.7-2)
• xfce 4.10.1
• grub 2.02~beta2
• Twitter's microblogging client Hotot replaced by Turpial (Hotot is not under development any more)
• the new wallpaper ‘Vortex' by LiquidSky64
• Sparky Conky Manager updated up to version 0.1.7 having a new applet of battery status
• System has been synchronized with Debian "testing" repository as of 03/12/2014.
• Added new apps:
• sparky-aptus-upgrade (System Upgrade) - small (recommended) tool for system upgrading
• sparky-systemd-ui - a metapackage which gives you an access to systemd settings as root
• Removed packages:
• sparky-tray
• old, deprecated mate packages of 1.4 & 1.6

What is new in version 3.4:

• Linux kernel 3.14
• all packages upgraded from Debian testing repositories as of 2014/06/23
• Openbox 3.5.2-6
• Xfce 4.10
• support for installation on machines with EFI
• systemd is the default init system now, see how to change sysvinit to systemd:
• http://sparkylinux.org/sparky-systemd/
• menu of Openbox (Base Edition) has gotten a few extra scripts
• added new package: hardinfo
• TeamViewer has been updated up to version 9

What is new in version 3.3:

• Xfce 4.10.1
• Linux kernel 3.13
• All packages upgraded from Debian testing repositories as of 2014/03/16

What is new in version 3.2.1:

• Linux kernel 3.12
• All packages upgraded from Debian testing repositories as of 2014/01/29
• Xfce 4.10
• The same set of tools and applications which can be found in all Sparky spins
• Added ‘boot-repair' tool
• Added ‘plymouth' + Sparky theme
• Download manager uGet has been upgraded from Debiana "Sid" repository; it uses ‘aria2' for downloading files as default
• Iceweasel has been synchronised with uGet via FlashGot addon - downloading big files never been so easy
• Added microblogging client Hotot
• Whisker Menu is preinstalled but not active - I am a traditional man, so the traditional Xfce menu is what I need. Anyway, the Whisker Menu can be found in the panel's applet box.