14 DAY TRIAL // SparkyLinux, a lightweight, fast, and simple Linux distribution designed for both old and new computers featuring customized MATE, Xfce, and Base (CLI) desktops, is now at version 3.3.
The SparkyLinux 3.3 “Annagerman” system is built on Debian GNU/Linux “Jessie,” just like the previous versions, and it features a lot of desktop environments, including MATE and Xfce.
The developers of SparkyLinux also provide a number of other flavors for this particular distribution. This should be a routine maintenance update, but the developer has decided to make some big changes.
Just last week, the SparkyLinux developers released the new versions of the LXDE, e17, and Razor-Qt desktops, but they didn't forget about the rest of the flavors. All the new versions have a few packages and updates in common.
For example, the Linux kernel has been updated to version 3.13.3. It may not be the latest version released, but it's part of the latest branch available. All the packages have been upgraded from Debian testing repositories as of 2014/03/16, MATE has been updated to version 1.6, Xfce has been updated to version 4.10.1, and Openbox has been updated to version 3.5.2-6.
The developers have decided to end the Sparky Ultra and CLI Editions and combine theme in a single release, which is now the Base edition.
“Sparky Base Edition is targeted to people who want to build their own desktop on the top of Debian testing base. Comparing to the CLI Edition, Sparky Base works in graphical mode so it’ll be much easy to install and configure additional applications then before. Sparky Base is very light and its size is about 600 MB,” reads the announcement.
Sparky Base Edition features X Server, Openbox (optional), Lightdm, installer, the Netsurf web browser, the XChat IRC client, the Ceni network manager, Midnight Commander, PCManFM, Leafpad, Lxmusic, Alsamixer, Synaptic, and a few others.
Also, the SparkyBackup-System (the default Sparky backup too) has been removed from the Live system, but it can be downloaded from the official repositories.
A complete list of changes, new features, new packages, and fixes can be found in the official announcement of the SparkyLinux distro. You should also check out the release announcement for the LXDE, e17, and Razor-Qt desktops, which also covers all the new application that have been added to the regular system.
You can download SparkyLinux 3.3 Base, SparkyLinux 3.3 MATE, and SparkyLinux 3.3 Xfce right now from Softpedia.