What’s new in SparkyLinux Xfce 5.8 RC:
- Debian repo set to buster now, not to testing
- Sparky repo still points to testing, and will be updated automatically soon
- usrmerge set dirs symlinks (can be removed after)
- added inxi tool to all iso images
SparkyLinux Xfce is a custom edition of the well known SparkyLinux distribution, based on the stable branch of Debian/GNU Linux and built around the lightweight Xfce desktop environment. Other flavors of SparkyLinux include the E17 (Enlightenment), MATE, LXDE, Razor-Qt and Trinity desktop environments, a GameOver edition with numerous games, as well as a CLI (Command-Line Interface) version with basic utilities for advanced users who want to build their own Linux distribution.
Distributed as 32-bit and 64-bit Live DVDs
This edition of SparkyLinux is distributed as two Live DVD ISO images that can be easily installed or used as-is from either a USB flash drive or a blank DVD disc. Both are multilingual and support the 64-bit and 32-bit architectures.
It is available in multiple languages, including English, Polish, French, Swedish, German, Danish, Arabic, Slovak, Romanian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Czech, Spanish, Dutch, Hindi, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Portuguese, and Russian.
Boot options
If you want to use the Live DVD to boot an existing operating system or run a in-depth memory test, you can do so by using the included options from the boot menu. Additionally, if your graphics card is not supported by the default entry, you can choose to boot into safe graphics or text mode and start the graphical interface from there.
Xfce is in charge of the graphical session
As mentioned, the default desktop environment is provided by the Xfce project and it is bundled with all of its default utilities and tools, including the Thunar file manager, Galculator, Orange calendar, Xarchiver archive manager, Parcellite clipboard manager, and many others.
Default applications
Among some of the preinstalled applications, we can mention the Icedove and Iceweasel email and web browser clients, Liferea RSS aggregator, LibreOffice office suite, Pidgin instant messenger, Hotot Twitter client, Transmission torrent downloader, uGet download manager, gFTP FTP client, gThumb image viewer, and GIMP image editor.
Several multimedia application and utilities are also included in SparkyLinux Xfce, such as the Audacity audio editor, Avidemux video editor, DeVeDe DVD-Video creator, Camorama webcam viewer, Minitube YouTube client, VLC Media Player, Sound Converter, Radio Tray, and Exaile music player.
Bottom line
All in all, SparkyLinux Xfce proved to be a stable operating system, and due to the fact that it contains so many useful applications and utilities it can be used by anyone on a daily basis. It even supports low-end machines!
