14 DAY TRIAL // The development of the SparkyLinux 4.6 operating system continues based on the latest packages from the upcoming Debian GNU/Linux 9 "Stretch" release, and the team is announcing today the immediate availability of the Release Candidate.
SparkyLinux 4.6 entered development only two months ago, in early March, and it relies on the packages from the Debian Testing repositories, which will soon become Debian GNU/Linux 9 "Stretch." How soon? We don't know yet because the Debian Project didn't announce a release date for the Stretch stable series.
However, it should launch something this month, and so will SparkyLinux 4.6, which received today a Release Candidate (RC) build that is, of course, based on the software repositories of the upcoming Debian GNU/Linux 9 "Stretch" operating system, running the latest kernel from the Linux 4.10 branch.
"There is a development release of Sparky 4.6 RC STB ready for testing. It’s a final test before releasing the stable version of 4.6 STB. Sparky 4.6-RC STB is based on Debian (still) testing 'Stretch' and pre-configured to use upcoming Debian stable Stretch base," reads today's announcement.
Xfce, MinimalGUI (Openbox) and MinimaCLI ISOs are ready for testing
The SparkyLinux 4.6 Release Candidate is not a major milestone, as it's here only to resolve some of the issues blocking the stable release, as well as add some final touches. Additionally, it looks like some "deep cleaning" was made to the pre-installed packages of the distribution to reduce the size of the ISO image.
Unfortunately, the Calamares graphical installer is still shipping with LUKS-based encryption disabled, so you can't perform a full disk encrypted install of SparkyLinux 4.6 using these RC images. However, the Sparky Advanced Installer is still available.
If you want to take SparkyLinux 4.6 for a quick test drive, you can download the Xfce, MinimalGUI (Openbox) and MinimaCLI (text only) ISOs right now from our website. Please note that this is a pre-release version of the operating system, so you should not install it in a production environment.