14 DAY TRIAL // The development team behind the Debian-based SparkyLinux GNU/Linux distribution announced today, December 18, 2016, the release and general availability of a new ISO respin, versioned 4.5.2.
SparkyLinux 4.5.2 is the second maintenance update in the SparkyLinux 4.5 "Tyche" stable series of the operating system, which is based on the Debian Testing repositories, thus shipping with bleeding-edge packages and GNU/Linux technologies, such as the recently released Linux 4.8.15 kernel.
However, the main reason behind this ISO respin of SparkyLinux is to fix a nasty bug that makes it possible, again, to install and use the Debian-based distro inside a virtual machine created with the popular, cross-platform and open-source Oracle VirtualBox virtualization software.
"The new images provide a VirtualBox related bug fix, which has been solved via the latest updates from Debian testing repos," reads today's announcement. "So, the updated ISO images let you play, test and install SparkyLinux inside the VirtualBox virtual machine, as before."
Firefox 50.1.0, Budgie Desktop 10.2.9, and Vivaldi 1.6 have landed
Apart from fixing the VirtualBox-related issue and rebasing the entire system on Linux kernel 4.8.15, the SparkyLinux developers managed to update various popular software applications to their latest versions as of December 18, 2016. These include the Budgie 10.2.9, CDE (Common Desktop Environment) 2.2.4-1, and Enlightenment 0.21.5 desktops.
Additionally, SparkyLinux 4.5.2 ships with the Lumina 1.1.0-p1 desktop environment, the 1.18.4 release of the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL), Mozilla-derived Pale Moon 27.0.3 and Tor Browser 6.0.8 web browsers, as well as the Chromium-based Vivaldi 1.6 and SlimJet 12.0.12 web browsers.
Ultimately, the SparkyLinux 4.5.2 ISO images include the Skype Installer 0.1.10 tool, which lets users install the 4.x branch of the VoIP client on 32-bit platforms or the 1.x Alpha series on 64-bit systems. SparkyLinux 4.5.2 is now available for download via our web portal, but existing users don't need to download anything.