14 DAY TRIAL // The development team behind the Debian-based SparkyLinux operating system released a new rolling version based on the upcoming Debian GNU/Linux 11 "Bullseye" OS.
SparkyLinux 2019.09 is the rolling release for September 2019, fully updated from the Debian Testing repositories, where the development of the upcoming Debian GNU/Linux 11 "Bullseye" operating system takes place. All packages are synced with the Debian Testing repos as of September 1st, 2019.
But the better news is that SparkyLinux 2019.09 is the first release of the Debian-based distribution to ship with the recently announced Xfce 4.14 desktop environment. So if you want to get a taste of the new Xfce 4.14 release, go ahead and download the SparkyLinux 2019.09 Xfce edition.
However, the developers warn that upgrading the Xfce desktop environment to the latest Xfce 4.14 release will result in some desktop settings being lost, such as the desktop wallpaper. Users will have to manually set the wallpaper back after the system has rebooted.
GCC 9 is now the default system compiler
The SparkyLinux 2019.09 rolling release also ships with an LXQt edition, which is using the latest LXQt 0.14.1 desktop environment, as well as MinimalCLI and MinimalGUI editions, the latter featuring the Openbox 3.6.1 window manager by default. All editions are powered by the Linux 5.2.9 kernel.
However, if you want to install a new kernel, the latest Linux 5.2.11 and Linux 5.3 RC6 kernels are available for installation from SparkyLinux's unstable repositories. SparkyLinux 2019.09 also switches to GCC 9 as default system compiler as GCC 8 has been completely removed from this version.
Also removed is the Firefox ESR web browser, which was replaced with the latest Firefox release. The SparkyLinux 2019.09 Xfce, LXQt and MinimalGUI editions are shipping with the latest Calamares 3.2.13 graphical installer, which now correctly sets home partition on non-root partitions with no-formatting option.
You can download SparkyLinux 2019.09 Xfce, SparkyLinux 2019.09 LXQt, SparkyLinux 2019.09 MinimalGUI, and SparkyLinux 2019.09 MinimalCLI right now from our free software portal. Existing SparkyLinux 2019.08 users will need only to update their installations by running a full system upgrade.