Available as Home, MinimalGUI, and MinimalCLI editions

Sep 28, 2017 19:17 GMT  ·  By

The SparkyLinux development team announced the release of SparkyLinux 5.1 rolling operating system for 32-bit and 64-bit computers, an incremental update bringing the latest components and technologies.

Dubbed "Nibiru," the SparkyLinux 5.1 images are here only two weeks after the release of SparkyLinux 5.0, and they've been synced with the Debian Testing repos as of September 25, 2017, which means that the entire distribution is currently based on the upcoming Debian GNU/Linux 10 "Buster" operating system.

"Sparky “Home” edition provides fully featured operating system with lightweight desktops: Xfce, MATE and LXQt," said the devs. "Sparky MinimalGUI (Openbox) and MinimalCLI (text mode) lets you install the base system with a desktop of your choice and a minimal set of applications via the Sparky Advanced Installer."

Here's what's new in SparkyLinux 5.1

Powered by the Linux 4.12.13 kernel, SparkyLinux 5.1 "Nibiru" comes with a new in-house build tool called Sparky Web Browser Installer, which helps users more easily install their favorite web browser, upgrades the default graphical installer to Calamares 3.1.4, and integrates the Manokwari desktop environment into the repos.

Also addresses an issue with the memtest86+ memory testing tool, removes the GCC 6 compiler as GCC 7 is now enabled by default for the distro, and updates the obmenu-generator tool to version 0.80 in the MinmalGUI edition to improve the menu's compatibility with SVG icons. Other than that, the source code repos were moved to GitHub.

It should be noted that the Linux 4.12 kernel series reached end of life earlier this month with the Linux kernel 4.12.4 release, and SparkyLinux 5.1 "Nibiru" uses version 4.12.3, which means that you should upgrade to the Linux 4.13.3 kernel that's already available in the SparkyLinux unstable repository.

If you're using SparkyLinux 5.0 on your personal computer, you can now upgrade to SparkyLinux 5.1 using the commands listed below. For new installations, you can always download the SparkyLinux 5.1 "Nibiru" 64-bit or 32-bit ISO images with Xfce, MATE, LXQt, Openbox, or text mode flavors from our web portal.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade