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SparkyLinux devs announced today the release and general availability of SparkyLinux 7.0 “Orion Belt” as the latest stable update to this lightweight, Debian-based GNU/Linux distribution.
Based on the recently released Debian 12 “Bookworm” operating system series and synced with its repositories as of July 15th, 2023, SparkyLinux 7.0 ships with the same long-term supported Linux 6.1 LTS kernel series, but it also allows users to install newer kernels for better hardware support, such as the latest Linux 6.3 kernel.
As expected, this release comes with updated desktop environments for all supported editions. These include KDE Plasma 5.27 LTS, Xfce 4.18, MATE 1.26, and LXQt 1.2.0. The Openbox 3.6.1 window manager is used on the MinimalGUI edition for those who want to fully configure their installations.
One interesting change in SparkyLinux 7.0 is support for booting the amd64 ISO images on machines with UEFI firmware and Secure Boot enabled. This will allow probably also enable users to install SparkyLinux alongside Windows 10.
While upstream removed os-prober for detecting other installed operating systems on the same machine, SparkyLinux 7.0 provides a GRUB option to detect other OSes anyway. However, this feature will be removed upon updating your installations, but there’s a workaround provided by the devs in the release notes.
SparkyLinux 7.0 “Orion Belt” is available for download right now from the official website as live ISO images featuring the KDE Plasma, Xfce, LXQt, MATE, and Openbox graphical environments. Only the MinimalCLI edition is also supported on old 32-bit hardware.
While SparkyLinux 6 will receive security updates until 2026, users are already allowed to upgrade their installations to SparkyLinux 7 by using an in-house-built upgrade script and following these instructions. Also, SparkyLinux Rolling 2023 users who update their installations will also be moved to SparkyLinux 7.0 stable.
Last updated 11 months ago
