SparkyLinux 7 has now reached its third point release. A complete set of packages from the stable repositories of Debian and Sparky, as well as LibreOffice 7.4.7, KDE Plasma 5.27.5, LXQt 1.2.0, MATE 1.26, Xfce 4.18, Openbox 3.6.1, Firefox 115.8.0esr, Thunderbird 115.8.0, VLC 3.0.20, and Exaile 4.1.3, are included in the package update.

Sparky 7.3

The 3rd update of Sparky 7 – 7.3 is out.

It is a quarterly updated point release of Sparky 7 “Orion Belt” of the stable line. Sparky 7 is based on and fully compatible with Debian 12 “Bookworm”.

Changes:
– all packages updated from Debian and Sparky stable repos as of March 13, 2024
– Linux kernel PC: 6.1.67 LTS (6.8.0, 6.6.21-LTS & 5.15.151-LTS in sparky repos)
– Linux kernel ARM: 6.6.20 LTS
– LibreOffice 7.4.7
– KDE Plasma 5.27.5
– LXQt 1.2.0
– MATE 1.26
– Xfce 4.18
– Openbox 3.6.1
– Firefox 115.8.0esr (123.0.1-sparky in sparky repos)
– Thunderbird 115.8.0
– VLC 3.0.20
– Exaile 4.1.3
– added new application (amd64 only):  Noi – a chatboot GUI application with support for ChatGPT, Claude, Bard, Poe, Perplexity, Copilot, HuggingChat, Pi, Coze and YOU.

Sparky 7.3 “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): MinimalGUI (Openbox) & MinimalCLI (text mode)
– ARMHF & ARM64 Openbox & CLI

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

PC live user:password = live:live
ARM user:password = pi:sparky

If you have Sparky 7 installed – simply keep it up to date. No need to reinstall your OS.

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

Sparky 7.3