14 DAY TRIAL // SparkyLinux 3.4, a lightweight, fast, and simple Linux distribution designed for both old and new computers featuring customized LXDE, e17, and Razor-Qt desktops is now available for download.
The SparkyLinux 3.34 "Annagerman" system is built on Debian GNU/Linux "Jessie" and is not all that different from the previous versions in the series, at least not in this particular aspect.
The developers of SparkyLinux also provide a number of other flavors for this particular distribution, but the current update covers LXDE, Razor-Qt, and Enlightenment 18. These are desktop environments mostly known for the fact that they are very lightweight.
One of the major changes that have been implemented in the latest 3.4 release is the update to a new kernel, 3.14. This is now the most advanced Linux kernel version that you can get into a distro, and this means that SparkyLinux is a very good OS to try on new hardware.
Also, LXDE has been updated to version 0.5.5-6, Razor-Qt has been updated to version 0.5.2-4, and Enlightenment is now at version E18. The distributions come with support for installation on machines with EFI, systemd is now the default init system, and the repository list has been split for Debian and additional packages.
Even if the new installer has been implemented, the old version is still available and can be especially useful for older machines. You can run it from a terminal:
sudo sparkylinux-installer
If you prefer the graphical mode, you need to run this command:
sudo sparkylinux-installer gui
According to the developers, the system control center for LXDE desktop (Sparky Center) has been rebuilt, the tool for updating, installing, and removing packages (Sparky APTus) has been updated, it is now possible to remove non-free and restricted packages that are pre-installed in the system, and missing language packages have been added.
The developer has also explained that the UEFI support is experimental and that it hasn’t been properly tested. If you happen to find any problem, you need to contact the developers and report the issue.
"We have made a couple of successful testing installations of Sparky in EFI mode in a virtual environment. We can’t promise that installation on a physical machine is fine. We never tried this, because we don’t have any 'normal' machine with EFI," said the developers in the official announcement.
A complete list of changes and new features can be found in the official announcement of the SparkyLinux distro. You can download SparkyLinux 3.4 LXDE, SparkyLinux 3.4 e18, and SparkyLinux 3.4 Razor-Qt right now from Softpedia.