SparkyLinux - Fast, User Friendly and Brilliant

I haven't tried Sparky before but I'm so glad I did. It's fast and user-friendly, whilst being based on a solid Debian testing base.
A brilliant little distro with lots of custom tools that make configuring your system and/or installing new desktops a breeze.
I'm rarely blown away by distros, but this one was impressive and I would recommend it to any user.
Give it a go. What have you got to lose?
I hope you enjoy the video :-)
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Ramble On!

[@rossgebert9422]

I watched this last night 15Nov20, your review was excellent. So guess who downloaded and installed it in my old HP tower. I can't believe just how GOOD i have found SparkyLinux.. The installing of the apps I use, was so easy. Love your posts. THANK-YOU.

[@OldTechBloke]

You’re welcome Ross

[@andrewpalm2103]

I had a Sparky Linux installation a few years ago. Actually, I had two, one GUI and the other TTY terminal only. I think they were based on the Testing branch of Debian. Using them was a GIANT step in my Linux learning path, and I can wholeheartedly recommend them. Sparky stays very close to plain Debian, but takes care of some of the niggling details that can be tedious. Cheers from Wisconsin.

[@bruhthecommenter1664]

im a kde neon user trying to escape from ubuntu and didn't like lmde would you recommend this distro for me?

[@andrewpalm2103]

@@bruhthecommenter1664 That is very hard to say, as it depends on your use case. I used Sparky with the Xfce desktop and I liked it. The stable version has somewhat older software, which wasn't a problem for me, but if you are used to Ubuntu, the testing version would have software closer to Ubuntu. In any case, if you use Sparky, be prepared to so some tweaking and a bit more maintenance than what you would have to do in Ubuntu. This is good for learning Linux, but it could also be a burden, depending on what you want.

[@bruhthecommenter1664]

@@andrewpalm2103 ok i understand i think i'll try to learn about sparky a bit more and debian based distros in general

[@albussd]

So what are those 'niggling details' from Debian that Sparky takes care of? Also why would one use Sparky when it's just pretty much Debian? Are there any advantages it provides over its parent Debian?

[@andrewpalm2103]

@@albussd My use of Sparky was too long ago to remember those details, but I do remember that installing it was easier than Debian for me at the time. Perhaps it was things like setting up sudo. I now use straight Debian myself.

[@kennyp6622]

Glad to hear the family is on the mend. Great video.

[@LDWilliams]

Looks to be a well thought distro, they have a type of user in mind and catered specifically for them

[@geraldfast3d]

Thanks for doing this.. I'll try it out.. Never tried a Debian version before.. Keep doing what you do!

[@OldTechBloke]

Cheers appreciate it

[@cronTabsolute]

Absolutely perfect for developers who are accustomed with Linux and want a basic UI. Installed Fedora 33 recently but have noticed many issues. I think I will migrate to this.

[@deechvogt1589]

Steve, oh my, I think you found another gem here. Yet another exciting review. Thank you OTB community for putting him on to this. I hold you all responsible for continuing to enable my distro hopping addiction :) Cheers, and stay safe and well!

[@OldTechBloke]

Enjoy ;-)

[@deechvogt1589]

@@OldTechBloke Thanks, catch you next week. :)

[@markscheck]

Aptus does look pretty awesome!! Great Job as always.

[@markscheck]

I actually may start using Sparky, because of this video!

[@RockawayCCW]

I love Sparky, although right now the testing branch is a little screwy because Debian is in the middle of a transition and there are lots of packages being held back. I recommend installing the stable branch.

[@StephenSE9]

Hurray!!! Back in The Cabin next week 👏👏👏

[@elsombero1747]

Sparky Linux.. A classic OS that surely makes me feel old. It was advertised a lot on some polish magazine that I don't longer remember. There was even a giveaway where I did a pendrive with this os installed on the USB drive and I had a very good time testing it out but unfortunately this wasn't my first Linux OS... My first experience with Linux was with my IT teacher back in 2006 with some preview version of knoppix or whatever that distro was called, that could fit on a 512mb flash drive. Later on I was on Ubuntu, then Debian, then 1 month of Arch Linux and now I'm using Debian as my main os and my USB C ssd has Anarchy Linux on it. Back in my days, Linux sucked but was still fun to use but nowadays, we have a lot of distros and the installation on most distros got very noob friendly.

[@Pago422]

A wery nice looking distro, i have to test it. Thanks for the review and I had never heard about Sparky before

[@albussd]

Did you get to try it? How did it go?

[@Pago422]

@@albussd I have tested it, it installed fine on my Intel Nuc. Strange tho when the live environment, started I connected my WiFi but the installer told me that the system didn't had Internet access. But I was surfing on KZbin. A bug apparently. It installed fine tho 👌

[@ThePressurizer]

This is actually a really neat version of Debian, I wish they'd get a bit more exposure. I wonder why MX is so much better known, I kinda prefer Sparky. There are more versions, their scripts/tools are nice and their default configurations seem much cleaner.

[@OldTechBloke]

Agree completely

[@theshowman8478]

Am definitely going to try this one ! (downloading MATE torrent while I'm watching this video). Thanks again.

[@DannyMexen9]

Here I am, kind sir, downloading MX to test. And while waiting, I remembered you put this out. Watched it and now I have two torrents running. There goes my weekend.

[@OldTechBloke]

Enjoy!

[@kingmekrillinme4831]

I just saw this video pop up randomly in my youtube feed so I had click and say "fuck...yes!" One of my 3 main computers is the gameover edition along with a live boot multimedia edition. Absolutely love these distros from Sparky.

[@raihan5405]

Lxqt or xfce .. which is best can you explain

[@raihan5405]

Also which is better for you sparky Linux or antiX

[@lauwe54]

had it for years but now this new one 6 i think just blows me away,,its so very fast neat and tidy and so smooth,and its irish so cant go wrong hahaha,,thanks for your video again oh xfce only its so cool

[@alberttenfoot]

I think the Team Leader of Sparky Linux is Polish, but I'm not certain of that.

[@folksurvival]

Sparky is very underrated.

[@folksurvival]

I tried it a few months ago and liked it.

[@sound0ftruth]

If you want Debian flavored distro, use Debian. If you want Arch flavored distro, use Arch. If you want Redhat flavored distro, use Fedora or Centos. If you are a techie, Never rely on second hand maintainance. This is my advice of experience.

[@plasmatube7328]

you are absolutely right. take the source instead of one of the thousends unnecessary spins

[@Mach7RadioIntercepts]

Yes, Sparky seems to be way more developed since my last time looking into it. DWM may be fun to run in this system.

[@GraemeWant]

Good video. I agree, Sparky it is a great Distro. I run a Local Area Network with three Windows computers, one is even on Windows XP. Three Linux computers. One on Linux Lite, Ubuntu 16.4 LTS (Test Web Server), and one on Sparky(My Media Center connected to my TV). Also have a Brother HL2240D printer connected to the Windows XP PC, and this is setup as a Shared Printer. All computers can see each other and access the Printer, and Share files. However Sparky was by bar far the easiest to setup from a Network accessibility point of view. I only had to install Samba , to get full network connectivity and even got access to the Windows Shared Printer without any difficulties. Sparky fits in well with a Windows Network and is not too resource hungry. It is currently my favorite Distro.

[@torspedia]

That might be a good distro to try different DEs and WMs on, as some of those I'd not heard of before!

[@rmcellig]

Steve, this is an excellent review of an underrated distro. Sparky Linux has always been for me, a fantastic distro with a lot of work from the developers. Is it safe to install multiple desktop environments? On my pure Debian system I installed every DE from the debian installer. So far things are running smoothly. I just wanted to know your thoughts. Thanks again!!!🙂

[@OldTechBloke]

Some DEs can clash but most of the time you don’t have issues. With window managers I’ve never seen a problem

[@kingmekrillinme4831]

They are amazing and underated by far. I carry around a usb Ventoy live boot for the multimedia edition, rescue edition along with my Kali. As well as the gameover edition is installed onto one of my main computers. I love them.

[@patrickmcgee8556]

dude sparky linux is great....i have it on my old computer and it works....alot of new linux distros wont work worth a shit on older computers

[@sonopro1]

Hello OTB, After exploring MX in more depth, it's hard to find a better debian distribution. Even LMDE (Mint) is a bit behind because of the MX tools. I'm still trying MX after customizing it. After I got out of the MS/Apple universe, I had Mandrake, PCBSD, Mandriva, PClinuxOs, OpenSuse, Ubuntu and for several years Mint/Mint Mate as my main system. For the first time, I'm really thinking of putting my efforts on MXLinux because it offers me the possibility to easily make ISOs of my changes and install them at my friends' homes. My changes are very specific to help increase productivity in an enterprise environnement.

[@OldTechBloke]

MX is a great choice

[@johnruschmeyer5769]

CDE - OSF Common Desktop Environment. At one time, the common desktop environment on Unix workstations from companies such as DEC, HP, and Sun. It's been Open Source for some time.

[@garth56]

So if I ever use Debian I use the unstable branch, which again is pretty stable, to of set the distro dropping from say testing to stable rename the sources to testing instead of bullseye. If I use sid which is unstable at the minute I remove sid and replace it with unstable therefore it always will be unstable. Although I always get bored with even unstable and usually head back to Arch :-)

[@BrucesWorldofStuff]

I am glad to see that the family is doing better and things are looking up, kinda... Damn Covid! Good looking distro... What no Spectrwm... LOL That is ok, use to being the little guy... HaHaha... Wow! you don't really say that unless it is really good! Thanks OTB for the video! LLAP

[@OldTechBloke]

Cheers Bruce. I think spectrm is in the Debian repos but for some reason qtile isn’t

[@BrucesWorldofStuff]

@@OldTechBloke I believe you are right. I have not checked though. That is strange indeed that Qtile is not... :-( I have not changed any of my systems and don't think I will anytime soon, but hay, ya never know... Lol LLAP

[@walter_lesaulnier]

They have a KDE Plasma spin now.

[@jmdennis1967]

I think I had tried to install this but had issues. I used to use this back in the day but went with MX Linux or PCLINUKOS. I will have to try this out again.

[@kuntal.k]

I'm so much happy and satisfied with sparky rolling. It's more than stable as per my assumption. Recommended for Debian lovers.

[@thomasneemann5618]

it also runs very well in a virtual box from oracle

[@nicoldengenyakeye6905]

Im still running pointlinux which is based off debian jessie. My pc is old though everytime i try a newer distro my pc just cant keep up.

[@juzujuzu4555]

I would love to see more x86 distros. Sure it's really niche need, but as I have couple of computers and laptop using the last x86 generation CPUs that doesn't support X86_64, I really would like options. These are powerful enough machines for a lot of use cases, and each have 2GB of RAM, which also is enough with lightweight distros for many use cases.

[@deechvogt1589]

Yes, I too still have some serviceable pre-64 bit kit, including an 2009 Acer One 11'' netbook.

[@BennoKushnir]

So, although it's a testing system, you don't get a preview of xfce 4.16 ?

[@peppe540]

Please keep up your independent opinion; it makes this channel among the very few that are really worthwhile watching. The endless happy happy 'reviews' of all 26 flavors of Arch or Ubuntu are all too familiar to all of us. Waste of time. Luckily enough we are usually still happily agreeing to disagree ;-), so I am looking forward to more of your video's. Brilliant OpenBox and JWM spins by Sparky! BTW, any specific reason why you moved back to your 'old' studio? Cheers!

[@OldTechBloke]

Only in the old room this week because I’d been working in it all week so had the vm set up on that machine. I’ll probably Bob back and forth over the weeks :-) nice to have the choice

[@peppe540]

@@OldTechBloke Yes, I put it up before I finished watching your video ;-)

[@RO-vj6le]

every linux distros has their own advantages and disadvantages.However, this one is great and user friendly

[@engageintellect]

Anyone know what gtk theme this is?

[@giuseppecannavale3891]

Please how do I change deskops once download in terminal (aptus) because I want to change from xcfe to budgie thanks

[@OldTechBloke]

Just use the gui tool and choose your desktop at login

[@albussd]

Interesting. Thanks for putting this up. I'd like to know why would one use a derivative like Sparky instead of just using its parent Debian (Stable/Testing). Does it provide any additional advantage?

[@kuntal.k]

There are few advantage of using derivative. As per experience in parent, Debian you have no sudo previlege by default, you have to add sudoers manually which is bit complex for beginners. Secondly, debian comes without non free codecs and firmware, so you have to activate them later, manually. Derivative like sparky, mx are prebuilt with all those useful matters. Thirdly, latest stable packages, in pure debian, by default you will get bit old version of software because they give priority to stability, but sparky, mx etc shipped with latest stable packages in their repo.

[@shater1164]

Sparking star.

[@gorgecunth1581]

Seems like it could be a friendlier version than mobian, for something like the Pinephone. Unfortunately it's only available in ARMHF, not ARM64, as far as I know.

[@Willibef]

Did you manage to use Window Maker too?

[@OldTechBloke]

No I’ve never tried it

[@krimsonbun]

I have a laptop from 2002 with 480mb ram, perfect.

[@prbrad514]

Great video as always. Now I'm going to have to play with Sparky . It's all your fault.(just kidding)

[@OldTechBloke]

🙄

[@glencoukell163]

Watched this video last year so pardon me if yo already answered the question: do you feel that Debian Testing is safe for most users? This one is new: I hope you will give their KDE version a go. Thanks. If it is safe I will.

[@OldTechBloke]

Debian testing is fine for desktop use and the packages are newer than stable

[@rauldempaire5330]

Very good review.... Please, one question... I am stuck! I have the Sparky Linux installed on a flashdrive.... It's running great but I have trying all day to make it boot from the hard disk... where I am almost sure I installed it.... my problem is how to make boot from the hard disk... As you can see I got myself into this... got rid of Windows 7 and tried everything I saw on You tube...Plop and so on...The problem I don't have a CDROM in the PC only USB.... Any comment and help will be highly appreciated, Stay Safe!

[@OldTechBloke]

As a first step I would boot it from the flash drive and install again. Make sure that grub is installed to the mbr of the hard disk and that the partition containing the installation has a bootable flag. You can check this in something like gparted

[@rauldempaire5330]

@@OldTechBloke Thank you very much sir! HIGHLY Appreciated! Stay Safe!

[@thebreezer]

Surprised you didn't install Sparky Mate ;)

[@OldTechBloke]

I was tempted

[@NomadicDmitry]

I had a strange feeling about Sparky Linux. It seems to be kinda nice and easy to use, but at the same time doesn't sound like something that I would use as a full time system. So it's like. OK, but there are better distros in my opinion.

[@engageintellect]

If it doesn’t have the AUR I don’t want it.

[@gumkas77]

SparkyLinux good from POLAND xD

[@breadpirateroberts4946]

that logo looks like.... well i dont want to say

[@danield.7359]

I wasn't happy at all with Sparky Linux. The OS is on an old kernel and uses old versions of standard applications. The repository contains (an older) Firefox ESR only, which is a bit of a problem if you need to restore data from a previous (newer) Firefox installation only to find out it's incompatible with Firefox ESR. The File Manager is not very user friendly, as well as the archive program. Sparky doesn't use much resources but for me it doesn't make much of a difference if it uses 550 or 750MB after boot. We're in 2021 and still the frames of the windows are so thin (LXQt), it's hardly possible to grab them for resizing. The desktop looks really old - which probably isn't that much of a Sparky thing as it is with LXQt. I am disappointed.

[@FeelingShred]

It's sad that we are in 2020 and I still have to write how pathetic it is that we have to settle for considering a Distro great only for having pre-installed applications. Most big distros out there became very lazy and complacent. And Linux still makes cooling fans spin at max speed, diminishing their lifespan. Let's focus on what matters, again. We need people in the Linux community that actually uses Linux in a daily basis, and not Mac users who have Linux for a hobby.

[@FeelingShred]

To give one example, most distros don't even come with everything pre-set to have Hardware Acceleration enabled by default on browsers. Let alone the ones that keep insisting on Firefox. Chromium is the way to go folks, stop being stubborn, Firefox is dead. No end user is going to be bothered by installing VDPAU or VAAPI packages, I don't even remember the cumbersome process required to get HW Accel working on browser, too cumbersome.

[@FeelingShred]

@@douglasward718 I was using an older hardware from 2009 and using stock BIOS (which is very limited) The situation must have improved in these past 10 years, at least I hope so. Just ordered my new laptop, waiting for it to arrive. This time around I'm better prepared to extend the lifespan of the machine and prevent stupid things like Windows killing the drive, etc.

[@FeelingShred]

@@douglasward718 Speaking of such, do you have experience with SSD's? Can I use the SSD drive for the system normally? (with all the writes made into it all the time) Or is it a worry of the past? Overall, do you recommend SSDs?

[@patriciomobilia3213]

Tu comentario no coincide con el software libre. Cada uno la usa a su gusto y como quiddey

[@ericwood1942]

waffle

[@newfiejoe4998]

OTB, sorry to hear of a sick family member. I found a lot of encouragement from a website called, JW.org. Perhaps, it may also offer some encouragement for your family. I will pray for you and your family. GOD Bless!

[@bunnihilator]

Linux distros should bet on better designers