SparkyLinux 2023.07 Rolling Includes Packages from Debian 13

Rohan Timalsina

August 2, 2023 - TuxCare expert team

The latest semi-rolling distribution of SparkyLinux, SparkyLinux 2023.07, is available with updated packages from the upcoming Debian 13 release and Sparky testing repos. A new Debian repository, non-free-firmware, is also introduced in this rolling release. The upcoming major release, SparkyLinux 8 “The Seven Sisters,” will be based on the next Debian GNU/Linux 13 “Trixie” series, scheduled for release in 2025.

SparkyLinux 2023.07: What’s New?

The live ISO images of SparkyLinux 2023.07 now come with Secure Boot enabled by default. Also, all i386 packages have been removed from the amd64 ISOs.

Furthermore, it introduces the in-house developed sparky-locker screensaver, based on i3lock, for the Xfce, LXQt, and Openbox editions. Moreover, the Xfce, LXQt, and Openbox editions now feature the LightDM display manager instead of SDDM, along with the convenient lightdm-gtk-greeter-settings tool that allows easy configuration of various LightDM options.

For the Openbox editions, specific improvements have been made, such as removing the Lock option from the jgmenu and adding a new LockScreen option to Openbox wm-logout. These changes were implemented to address previous logout issues reported by users in earlier SparkyLinux releases.

Updated Applications

Several applications have been updated, which include:

GCC 12.3.0 system compiler
Python 3.11.4
systemd 253-rc2 init system
LibreOffice 7.4.5 office suite
Mozilla Thunderbird 102.13.0 email client
Mozilla Firefox 102.13.0 ESR web browser (Firefox 115.0.2 ESR is also available in the SparkyLinux repositories).

This release implements the Linux 6.3 kernel series and aims to offer cutting-edge packages sourced from the Debian Testing repositories. You can download SparkyLinux 2023.07 from the official website, which is available in four different desktop environments: KDE Plasma 5.27 LTS, Xfce 4.18, LXQt 1.2, and MATE 1.26. In addition, MinimalGUI (Openbox 3.6.1) and MinimalCLI (text model) editions are also available.

The sources for this article include a story from 9to5Linux.

Summary