SparkyLinux 7.0, based on Debian 12 Bookworm, has been released.

Sparky 7.0 Orion Belt

Sparky 7.0 “Orion Belt” has been released. It is based on and fully compatible with Debian 12 “Bookworm”.

Highlights:
– based on Debian stable 12 “Bookworm”
– all packages updated from Debian “Bookworm” & Sparky “Orion Belt” repos as of June 15, 2023
– Linux kernel 6.1.27 LTS as default (6.3.8 & 5.15.117 LTS in sparky unstable repos)
– Firefox 102.12.0ESR (114.0.1 in sparky repos)
– Thunderbird 102.12.0
– VLC 3.0.18
– LibreOffice 7.4.5
– Calamares 3.2.61
– KDE Plasma 5.27
– LXQt 1.2.0
– MATE 1.26
– Xfce 4.18
– Openbox 3.6.1
– Sparky APTus AppCenter 20230530
– ntp replaced by systemd-timesyncd
– amd64 ISO images have been improved – they can be boot on machines with UEFI motherboards with Secure Boot on; it took me over a week of work, 12 isos and cost me a machine with Windows 10 and Secure Boot
– small changes

Sparky 7 “Orion Belt” is available in the following versions:
* amd64 BIOS/UEFI+Secure Boot: Xfce, LXQt, MATE, KDE Plasma, MinimalGUI (Openbox) & MinimalCLI (text mode)
* i686 non-pae BIOS/UEFI (Legacy): MinimalCLI (text mode)

Sparky 7 still supports old machines x86 (32bit), but only Minimal ISO image available.
ARM images are not ready yet.

Live user/password: live

Make sure that the ‘os-prober’ will be not executed to detect other bootable partitions as default, but Sparky provides a GRUB option to detect other OSes anyway.
But, a next updating of GRUB packages override the option.
To fix that manually, add the line:
GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false
on the end of the file (as root):
/etc/default/grub
Then update grub:
sudo update-grub

Upgrading

Sparky 6 users

If you have Sparky 6 (oldstable now) – simply keep it up to date – it gets security updates up to 2026.

If you would like to upgrade Sparky 6 to the present stable Sparky 7 – follow the Wiki page: wiki.sparkylinux.org/doku.php/upgrade_6_to_7
Or use my upgrade script:
wget https://sparkylinux.org/files/sparky-dist-upgrade67
chmod +x sparky-dist-upgrade67
sudo ./sparky-dist-upgrade67

Sparky 7 users

If you have installed Sparky rolling (7) based on Debian testing – simply keep it up to date – it became stable automatically. No need to reinstall your OS.

If you would like to keep Sparky rolling, based on Debian testing – wait for new Debian and Sparky testing repos to be ready – I will separately post it when ready.

New iso images of Sparky 7 “Orion Belt” can be downloaded from the download/stable page

Many thanks to all our community members for supporting Sparky project.
Send a small tip if you like SparkyLinux.

Sparky 7.0 Orion Belt - SparkyLinux