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The SparkyLinux development team announced today the general availability of SparkyLinux 2020.08 as the August 2020 snapshot of the semi-rolling release based on the Debian Testing repositories.
Synced with the Debian Testing repos, where the development of the upcoming Debian GNU/Linux 11 “Bullseye” operating system series takes place, as of August 14th, 2020, the SparkyLinux 2020.08 release is here fully patched against the latest security threats and powered by the Linux 5.7.10 kernel.
The biggest news for this release is the fact that the entire system is now using the latest GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) 10 as default system compiler, which should translate to some overall performance improvements. The GCC 9 packages are no longer part of the system.
Another new addition to the SparkyLinux 2020.08 release is the presence of the Memory Test and Hardware Detection utility to the live configuration, helping users better detect if their systems are fully supported.
Also installed is qt5ct, the Qt5 configuration utility, in the non-Qt based flavors of SparkyLinux, such as the Xfce, MATE and MinimalGUI (Openbox) editions. This allows users to more easily configure and use Qt apps.
Talking about desktops, this new SparkyLinux rolling release is shipping with the latest MATE 1.24.1 and Xfce 4.14 desktop environments, as well as the LXQt 0.14.1 desktop environment.
Among some of the major application updates included in SparkyLinux 2020.08, there’s the latest Mozilla Firefox 79.0 web browser, LibreOffice 7.0 RC2 office suite, VLC 3.0.11 media player, and Mozilla Thunderbird 68.11.0 email client. Also, Calamares 3.2.24 is being used as default graphical installer for all variants.
Users who need a newer kernel will be able to install the latest Linux kernel 5.8.1 or the first Release Candidate of the upcoming Linux kernel 5.9 from the SparkyLinux unstable repositories.
You can download SparkyLinux 2020.08 LXQt, MATE, Xfce, MinimalGUI (Openbox), or MinimalCLI editions for 64-bit computers right now from the official website or using the direct download links below.
If you’re using the SparkyLinux 2020 semi-rolling series, you don’t need to download the new ISO images. Just run the sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade command or use the Sparky Upgrade utility to upgrade your installations.
Last updated 4 years ago
