14 DAY TRIAL // The dev team working on Sparky Linux has recently announced the June snapshot, which just as expected, comes with a series of improvements, including a new Linux kernel.
First and foremost, Sparky 2020.06 is based on Debian testing “Bullseye,” so no surprise here.
But one of the highlights of this release is that it ships with Linux kernel 5.6.14, though if you use the unstable repos, you can also switch to Linux kernel version 5.7.0.
Needless to say, Sparky Linux has received the system upgrade powered by the latest Debian testing reports as of June 5, 2020, so you’re getting plenty of improvements with this release.
The applications that come pre-loaded have also been updated to the latest versions, so for example, Sparky 2020.06 ships with Firefox 77, Thunderbird 68.8.1, and LibreOffice 6.4.4.2.
Easy upgrade
There are also other notable changes in this release, such as debi-tool being replaced by gdebi and spterm, which is used for Sparky Terminal, to become part of Sparky tools. The dev team has also included RadioStation in this release, as well as a new experimental feature that allows for disk autopartitioning, encryption and lvm support in the Advanced Installer Dev.
The new Sparky version also comes with an important change for Calamares, with the team explaining the following the release notes (which you can also check out in full in the box after the jump):
“Calamares updated up to 3.2.24; changed password strength to a minimum number of digits as possible in Calamares, as requested a few times by our users (can be used 1 digit, but I recommend to use strong password); thanks to lami07.”
Needless to say, if you’re already running Sparky Linux on your device, you can easily update using Sparky Upgrade or via apt with the following two commands:
sudo apt update
sudo apt full-upgrade