There is the third update available for Sparky 8 – 8.3. This is a quarterly update of the Sparky 8 “Seven Sisters” stable release. Sparky 8 is based on and fully compatible with Debian 13 “Trixie”.
Main changes:
– All packages updated from the stable Debian and Sparky repositories as of May 9, 2026.
– Linux kernel 6.12.86-LTS (7.0.6, 6.18.29-LTS, 6.12.87-LTS in sparky repositories)
– LibreOffice 25.2.3 (26.2.3.2 in Debian backports repos)
– KDE Plasma 6.3.6
– LXQt 2.1.0
– MATE 1.26.0
– Xfce 4.20
– Openbox 3.6.1
– Firefox 140.10.2esr (firefox-latest 150.0.2 in sparky repos)
– Thunderbird 140.10.1esr
Sparky 8 “Seven Sisters” is available in the following versions:
– amd64 BIOS/UEFI + Secure Boot: Xfce, LXQt, MATE, KDE Plasma, MinimalGUI (Openbox) and MinimalCLI (text mode)
– ARM64: Openbox and CLI
PC live user:password = live:live
ARM user:password = pi:sparky
If you have Sparky 8 installed, simply keep it up to date. There’s no need to reinstall it.
New Sparky 8 “Seven Sisters” ISO images can be downloaded from the /download/stable/ page.
Informacja o wydaniu w języku polskim: https://linuxiarze.pl/sparky-8-3/
I have recently tested Sparky Stable 8.2 with 8 different desktop environments, just to get a feel of Sparky and the DEs, and the resource consumption on idle (see in norwegian: diskusjon.no/topic/1958761-ulike-skrivebordsmilj%C3%B8-og-vindusbehandlere-for-linux-erfaringer-og-testdata/)
The Xfce-version was the only version that did not install properly, APTus an Synaptic did not start, the Sparky wallpaper was missing and I guess it was a “polkit-issue”? Is this fixed in version 8.3?
Also: inxi reported the LXQt-version to be 2.1.4 😀
Sparky 8.3.1 Xfce uploaded, which fixes that issue. Thanks for reporting that.