14 DAY TRIAL // The SparkyLinux development team announced today the general availability of November's release of the latest SparkyLinux 2019 "Po Tolo" rolling release series.
The SparkyLinux 2019 "Po Tolo" operating system series is a rolling release version of SparkyLinux, based on the Debian Testing software repositories, where the upcoming Debian GNU/Linux 11 "Bullseye" operating system is currently being developed.
SparkyLinux 2019.11 is now the most up-to-date snapshot, adding all the latest software updates and security patches from the Debian GNU/Linux 11 "Bullseye" repositories as of November 2nd, 2019. Additionally, it upgrades the Linux kernel to version 5.2.17 and the Calamares installer to version 3.2.16.
Among other changes included in the SparkyLinux 2019.11, we can mention that the obmenu-generator tool has been replaced by sparky-obmenu in the SparkyLinux Openbox edition due to its libgtk2-perl dependency being removed and Perl being updated to version 5.30, and Yad 5.0, a fork of Zenity, available from the unstable repos.
Sid repos are now back
With this release, the SparkyLinux developers have also added the Debian Sid (unstable) software repositories, which isn't active, but can be enabled by those who know what they're doing. Also, the SparkyLinux unstable repositories now contain the latest Linux 5.3.8 and Linux 5.4 RC5 kernels.
You can download SparkyLinux 2019.11 right now through our free software portal. It's available in four editions, SparkyLinux 2019.11 Xfce, SparkyLinux 2019.11 LXQt, SparkyLinux 2019.11 GUI (Openbox) and SparkyLinux 2019.11 CLI (text-only). Existing users don't need to download or reinstall, just perform a full system upgrade.
On new installations, users should be aware of a known issue with the Calamares installer when used in encryption mode only. "I performed a few tests with different partition combinations with the Calamares installer on an encrypted device – it works if I don’t use swap partition (automated partitioning on virtual machine tested only)," warned the developer in the release announcement.