by 
The developers of the Debian-based SparkyLinux distribution announced today the release of SparkyLinux 2022.07 semi-rolling ISO images based on the Debian GNU/Linux Testing repositories.
Powered by the latest Linux 5.18 kernel series and based on the Debian Testing repositories as of July 5th, 2022, the SparkyLinux 2022.07 release is here to provide those who want to install the semi-rolling version of SparkyLinux with an up-to-date installation medium.
New features in SparkyLinux 2022.07 include Python 3.10.4 as the default Python implementation with the mention that Python 3.9 support was completely removed, the latest Calamares 3.2.60 graphical installer, as well as support for the sparky-upgrade command-line upgrade utility to use nala (if available) instead of apt for performing upgrades.
Several new packages are now pre-installed on the SparkyLinux ISO images, such as the Hypnotix IPTV streaming application from Linux Mint, nala front-end for libapt-pkg, Onboard on-screen keyboard, and zstd (Zstandard) fast lossless compression utility. Please note that nala is now installed by default, so sparky-upgrade will use it automatically when upgrading your system to newer versions.
Other changes include the replacement of the Kopete instant messaging app with KDE Telepathy in KDE Plasma image, as well as with the Pidgin IM in the LXQt edition, the addition of the GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false option in GRUB bootloader’s config to make os-prober detect other operating systems by default, and various updated components.
SparkyLinux 2022.07 is available for download right now from the official website as live 64-bit ISO images with the KDE Plasma 5.24.5 LTS, Xfce 4.16, LXQt 0.16.0, MATE 1.26.0, and Openbox 3.6.1 (MinimalGUI) graphical user interfaces, as well as a MinimalCLI edition that comes with a graphical environment.
If you’re using SparkyLinux 2022.04 or a previous version, you don’t need to download the new ISO images. To upgrade your installation to the 2022.07 release, simply run the sparky-upgrade command in a terminal emulator.
Last updated 2 years ago
