Hands- on with Sparky Linux 5, powered by Debian. I mentioned in my recent post about the release of Debian 9 (stretch) that the changes in Debian should soon start filtering through into the Debian- derived distributions. Sure enough, Sparky Linux announced a new release last weekend. ![]() Sparky Linux is one of the few distributions which offers two versions, based on the Debian stable and testing branches. The new release is Sparky Linux 5, based on Debian testing. The release announcement gives a brief overview, but because this version of Sparky is a rolling release distribution, there are not huge changes from the previous version. The installation images are on the Sparky. Linux 'rolling' download page, in three groups - - the Home Edition, which are complete install- and- use systems with either Xfce, LXQt, or MATE desktop; the Minimal Editions, which provide either a GUI or CLI version on which you can build the system the way you want it; and the Special Editions which are customized for gaming, multimedia, or system rescue use. All of the images are in hybrid ISO format, so you can either burn them to DVD (well, the minimal editions will actually still fit on a CD), or copy directly to a USB stick. This guide show you how to install latest stable Xfce 4.10 desktop environment version in Ubuntu 13.04/12.10/12.04 and Linux Mint 15/14/13. Xfce 4.10 Features. In this article, we shall list and walk through some of the best and most used desktop environments for Linux, including features and components. Search the DistroWatch database for distributions using a particular package. If you are looking for a distribution with the latest kernel, select "linux" from the. They are all Live media, and they work with both UEFI firmware and Legacy (MBR) systems, so you can boot and run any of them to check for compatibility and to decide if you want to install to your hard drive. Sparky Linux 5 - Live Desktop. Image: J. A. Watson. In the Sparky Live (LXQt) desktop, there are desktops icons for: Sparky Installer: This is the normal installer (actually Calamares), which should be used for most typical installations. Sparky Advanced Installer: This is not Calamares, it should be used if you want more control over exactly what is installed. Sparky Online Installation Guide: It's always good to have the documentation handy. Of course, if you don't have an internet connection while running the installation, this isn't much use. ![]() ![]() Sparky uses the Calamares installer, which means that installation is smooth, easy, and uneventful, and it works on UEFI firmware and Legacy Boot (MBR) systems. Sparky also includes a 'first boot' utility which runs automatically when you boot the installed system. It takes you through update installation, and gives you the opportunity to install additional language support. Sparky Linux 5 Xfce Desktop. Image: J. A. Watson. I have installed the Xfce version on my Asus X5. S. It uses Xfce 4. Xfce utilities such as the Thunar file manager, xfce. PDF viewer, and orage calendar. In addition it has Libre. Office, Firefox ESR, Thunderbird, Audacious audio player and VLC media player. It does not have GIMP, or any kind of photo management application installed, but there are a variety of these available for installation through synaptic. Sparky Linux 5 - MATE Desktop. Image: J. A. Watson. The MATE version is on my Acer Aspire V. I was a bit surprised to find that it is using MATE 1. It has the MATE utilities, of course, but then in the other major packages it is very similar to the Xfce version, with Firefox ESR, Thunderbird, Libre. Office, VLC media player and the Audacious media player. Sparky Linux 5 - LXQt Desktop. Image: J. A. Watson. I installed the LXQt version on my Asus R4. S. It uses LXQt 0. Linux (/ ˈ l ɪ n ə k s / ( listen) LIN-əks or, less frequently, / ˈ l aɪ n ə k s / LYN-əks) is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model.PCMan. FM, LXImage, QTerminal, qpdfview). It also includes Libre. Office, Firefox (ESR), Thunderbird, Clementine, VLC media player, and such. Update Notifier. All of the Sparky versions include a number of custom administrative and user tools, such as this update notifier, which pops up to inform you when updates are available, and then will run through the download and update process for you. I did not have any problems or surprises with any of those installations. There is a second installer shown on the Sparky Live desktop, the 'Advanced Installer'. One of the most significant features of that installer is that when you run it on either of the minimal editions, you can choose the desktop GUI you want from a list of 2. Zowie! That list includes all the usual candidates, such as Gnome, KDE, Cinnamon, LXDE and such; some less known or less common such as Budgie, Enlightenment, and Lumina, and some very lightweight window managers such as fluxbox, jwm, openbox, and i. That last one is particularly good news for me. I really like the i. I have a variety of distributions installed with it on my Samsung N1. Plus. However, I am very wary of Linux installers that I am not familiar with, and I would really like to start my i. Sparky Advanced Installer, I decided to just install the minimal GUI edition using the standard installer (Calamares), and then add the i. Sparky Linux 5 - Openbox Desktop. Image: J. A. Watson. The first step was easy enough, just boot the minimal GUI Live image, run the standard installer from the desktop, and then boot the installed system. That results in the openbox desktop shown here. That looks OK, very clean and simple. It has the g. Exec utility at the bottom left, which you can use to start whatever other utility or application you might want; a system upgrade utility next to that, which is a rather nice wrapper around the apt- get utility, and then a desktop selection icon. The right end of the panel has the date and time, an audio control applet, and a Network Manager applet. That last one is very good news, because it makes it easy to manage wi- fi connections rather than having to resort to CLI commands. The next step was to install the i. I was prepared to do this manually, using apt- get, but was pleasantly surprised to find that synaptic was already installed. From that I was able to select the i. That's not everything I am going to need or want to setup with i. Sparky Linux 5 - i. Image: J. A. Watson. After the i. 3 installation was complete, I logged out (right- click on the openbox desktop and choose Exit), then I could choose i. When I logged in I got the default i. Hooray! Just what I wanted - - but of course it still needed a bit of fine- tuning. This really is a 'minimal' installation - - it takes only 2. GB of disk space, compared to about 4. GB for the versions installed above. But I was still pleased and impressed with some of the basic utilities that were installed. For example, I expected to have to install a web browser, but it already has midori installed. If you're not happy with that there are plenty of others available in synaptic, including Firefox (either the latest or the Extended Support ESP version), Chromium, Palemoon, and several more. I usually have to install feh on my systems with i. Before getting around to that I noticed that nitrogen was already installed, and it is perfectly OK for this purpose. One less thing to have to install, yay. Of course there are all sorts of things - big things - which are not installed on this minimal system. You can decide for yourself if you want Libre Office, GIMP, multimedia players, image/photo management programs, PDF viewers/editors and the like. If you want them, they are all there and easily installed through synaptic. So, to summarize my experience with this new release of Sparky GNU/Linux, I would say that if you want a Debian- based distribution, with some nice administrative utilities added, Sparky can be a very good choice. You can have pre- configured versions with Xfce, MATE, or LXQt, or you can build your own desktop version by starting from the minimal GUI distribution, or your own server version by starting from the minimal CLI distribution. Read more on Linux. Best and Most Popular Linux Desktop Environments of All Time. One exciting aspect of Linux unlike with Windows and Mac OS X, is its support for numerous number of desktop environments, this has enabled desktop users to choose the appropriate and most suitable desktop environment to best work with, according to their computing needs. A Desktop Environment is an implementation of the desktop metaphor built as a collection of different user and system programs running on top of an operating system, and share a common GUI (Graphical User Interface), also known as a graphical shell. Suggested Read: 1. Open Source Light. Weight Desktop Environments I Discovered in 2. In this article, we shall list and walk through some of the best desktop environments for Linux, including a few of their illustrious features and components. However, we should note that this list is not organized in any particular order. That said, let’s move to listing the desktop environments. GNOME 3 Desktop. GNOME is probably the most popular desktop environment among Linux users, it is free and open source, simple, yet powerful and easy to use. It is designed from ground up to offer Linux desktop users a wonderful and exciting computing experience. It presents a activities overview for easy access to basic tasks, provides a powerful search tool for users to access their work from any place. However, GNOME 3 latest stable release ships in with the following distinguished components and features: Uses Metacity as default window manager. Comes with Nautilus as default file manager. Supports desktop notifications using a convenient messaging system. Enables on/off switching of desktop notifications and many more. Gnome 3 Desktop Environment for Linux. Visit Homepage: https: //www. KDE Plasma 5. KDE is a well- known, powerful and highly customizable desktop environment, designed to offer Linux desktop users absolute control over their desktop. The latest release in the KDE desktop series is the Plasma 5, which has brought in several improvements and new features. It has come with clean and well- polished user interfaces in comparison to previous versions, with improved readability. Built using Qt 5 and frameworks 5, a number of the notable components and new features in Plasma 5 include: Dolphin file manager. Kwin window manager. A converged shell. Updated graphics stack enabling smoother graphics performance. Modernized launchers. Workflow improvements in the desktop notification area. Improved support for high- density (high- DPI) display plus many other minor features. KDE Plasma System Monitor Window. Visit Homepage: https: //www. Installation: https: //www. Cinnamon Desktop. Cinnamon is in fact a collection of several minor projects such as Cinnamon, a fork of the GNOME shell, Cinnamon screensaver, Cinnamon desktop, Cinnamon Menus, Cinnamon Settings Daemon coupled with many more. Suggested Read: 6 Cool Linux Distributions to Review on Your Old PCs and Laptops. Cinnamon desktop is a fork of the GNOME desktop environment, it is the default desktop environment on Linux Mint together with MATE. Other minor projects and components integrated in the Cinnamon desktop comprise of the following: MDM display manager. Nemo file manager. Muffin window manager. Cinnamon session manager. Cinnamon translations. Blueberry, a bluetooth configuration tool plus many more. Cinnamon Desktop. Visit Homepage: http: //developer. Suggested Read: Install Cinnamon Desktop in Ubuntu and Fedora Distributions. MATE Desktop. MATE is an intuitive and appealing desktop environment, that is an extension of GNOME 2. It works on Linux and many other Unix- like systems. It comes with a handful of default applications such as Caja file manager, Pluma text editor, MATE terminal and more. Additionally, it is also the default desktop environment for Linux Mint along side Cinnamon desktop. Mate Desktop in Ubuntu 1. Visit Homepage: http: //mate- desktop. Unity Desktop. Unity is a graphical desktop shell for GNOME desktop environment. The Unity project was started by Mark Shuttleworth and Canonical, the makers of the well- known Ubuntu Linux distribution. It was started back in 2. Suggested Read: Top Linux Distributions To look Forward To In 2. We must note that, Unity is not a totally new desktop environment, but basically an interface to existing GNOME applications and libraries, with various technologies integrated within it, Unity comes with the following prominent components and features: Compiz windows manager. Nautilus file manager. A system dashboard. Lens, that sends search queries to Scope. Scope, a powerful search feature, that searches both locally and online in case the machine is connected to Internet. Unity preview, that previews search results in the dashboard. Offers an application indicator. System indicator that provides information about system settings such as power, sound, current session and many more. A simple and sleek notification component combined with other minor features. Unity Desktop. Visit Homepage: https: //unity. Xfce Desktop. If you are looking for a modern, open source, lightweight and easy- to- use, desktop environment for Linux and several other Unix- like systems such as such as Mac OS X, *BSD, Solaris and many others, then you should consider checking out Xfce. It is fast, and importantly user friendly as well, with low system resources utilization. It offers users a beautiful user interface combined with the following components and features: Xfwm windows manager. Thunar file manager. User session manger to deal with logins, power management and beyond. Desktop manager for setting background image, desktop icons and many more. An application manager. It’s highly pluggable as well plus several other features. XFCE Desktop. Visit Homepage: http: //www. LXQt Desktop. LXQt is also free, open source, lightweight, simple and fast desktop environment for Linux and BSD distributions. It is the latest version of LXDE, specifically designed, and a recommended desktop environment for cloud servers and old machines due to its remarkably low system resources usage such as low CPU and RAM consumption. It’s the default desktop environment on Knoppiz, Lubuntu and a few other less known Linux distributions, some of its notable components and features are listed below: pcmanfm- qt file manager, a Qt port for PCMan. FM and libfmlxsession session managerlxterminal, a terminal emulatorlxqt- runner, a quick application launcher. Supports multiple international languages. A simple and beautiful user interface. Supports an integrated energy- saving component. Supports several keyboard shortcuts plus many more. LXQT Desktop. Visit Homepage: http: //lxqt. Pantheon Desktop. Pantheon is a simple and well- designed desktop environment for Elementary OS, a Windows and Mac. OS X like Linux distribution. It offers users a clean and organized desktop experience. Due to its simplicity, Pantheon comes with not many visually observable features as compared to other popular desktop environments. Suggested Read: Top 5 Best Alternative Linux Distributions for Windows 1. Users. Nevertheless, it works exceptionally well for new Linux users switching from Windows or Mac OS X operating systems. Elementary Pantheon Desktop. Visit Homepage: https: //elementary. Deepin Desktop Environment. Deepin Desktop Environment(DDE) is also a simple, elegant and productive desktop environment for Linux, developed by the makers of Deepin OS. It works on several other Linux distributions as well including Arch Linux, Ubuntu, Manjaro among others, it ships in with some well designed and sleek user interfaces for absolute productivity. Furthermore, it is also user friendly with few configurations available. Most configurations are performed from a pop- out side panel, additionally, users can launch applications from a dock at the bottom of the screen similar to that in Pantheon desktop. Deepin OSVisit Homepage: https: //www. Enlightenment Desktop. Enlightenment initially started as a windows manager project for x. However, the project has grown to include a full desktop environment, mobile, wearable and TV user interface platforms as well. Additionally, the developers also wrote some useful libraries in the course of the project advancement. The libraries created will be used to build several desktop applications as well such an image viewer, video player and a terminal emulator and more, with up coming future works on a complete IDE. Notably, it is in active evolution from x.
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