New Linux Brings Spark to Debian
A new distribution popped up on my radar last month when it was added to the Distrowatch.com database. It probably helped that its newest release was codenamed "GameOver" and featured lots and lots of games. Yesterday its team released 2.1 "Eris" Ultra.
GameOver was a pretty cool release. It looked tough, but beyond that and its impressive list of games, it also featured Desura for Linux, Steam beta for Linux, and Wine & PlayOnLinux. It used LXDE on top of a Debian Wheezy base and shipped with codecs and plugins for full multimedia enjoyment, but opted for Nouveau NVIDIA graphics drivers.
SparkyLinux 2.1 "Eris" Ultra Edition
Yesterday the Sparky team released an update to their main desktop edition. SparkyLinux 2.1 is based off Wheezy repositories throught January 23. It features the OpenBox 3.5.0 window manager, Linux 3.2.35, Xorg X Server 1.12.4, and GCC 4.7.2. Software such as Chromium, Claws, Pidgin, Liferea, VLC, GIMP, Abiword, Gnumeric, and Synaptic come as default with the whole of the Debian repos to install. The desktop is a bit plain, but the launch panel and Conky setup do dress it up a bit. A cool python script puts your weather right in the menu.
