 Hey everybody welcome back to the channel today. I'm going to be taking a first look at Sparky Linux 2021.3 now. This is a distribution based on the rolling version of Debian so Debian testing and It is the first Sparky Linux that has KDE Plasma So I've never actually used Sparky Linux before or if I have I've forgotten about it just in the Plethora of distributions I've tended to take a look at but I'm pretty sure I've never taken a look at it before And definitely not on the channel so For those of you who have I thought I would start off by looking at the change log So they say the changes are they packages upgraded from Debian testing repos as of March 5th 2021 So they're just updating the software Linux kernel 5.10.13 Firefox 86 Thunderbird 78 so we're getting all the most recent version of versions of these software of This software this software You're gonna have to forgive me. I don't know how to talk anymore. It's just a thing that's happening My ability to speak words deteriorates deteriorate deteriorates fuck off As the night goes on and that's just gonna get worse and worse towards the end of the video I probably won't even be talking anymore. Just more like grunting and you know weird sounds. Anyways, lx cute 0.16 mate 1.24 XFC 4.16 open box 3.6.1 And the new version of KDE Plasma 5.20.5, which is what I'm going to be looking at now The most recent version of of vlc A newer version of calamaris Which is gonna be the installer and that's Pretty much now it does go through if you've if you're using this, you know On your computer now you can actually go through and do an in-place upgrade But we're going to be installing this in a virtual machine. So let's go ahead and get started. Shall we? Well, yep Here we go. Let's see how this goes. Yeah Oh, we get full screen right off the bat, which is always a good sign We have a cursor And we have some animations KDE splash screen So that means should be probably going to take us into a live environment then Okay, so let's see here. We'll go through the actual desktop environment once we get it installed So we have calamaris as the installer here American English, that's what we want And then Detroit English us in default is good You raise disk and swap will do, uh, we don't need to swap We'll go ahead and do next and we'll type in a password here We don't want to log in automatically. That is weird that that's checked out checked by default That's not usually the case. Usually you have to check that, you know by yourself But it's a choice Use same password as administrator pressure Use the same password for the administrator account That is a good thing to have checked automatically because I think everybody pretty much wants that So go ahead and hit install I might have just missed it, but it's possible that there was no confirmation for Where usually where after you selected your drive partitions and stuff it asks for confirmation Are you sure you want to do this? I don't remember that happening I'm also interesting to see that this usually there's progress in this right away So far this says zero, but we'll see Because usually the first thing it does is oh, here we go All right, I'm going to cut away here And when it's done, I'll come back and let you know how long it took Okay in the grand scheme thing that took about four and a half to five minutes So we're going to go ahead and hit the read actually I'm not going to be restarting this I'm going to shut this down Because I have to remove the installation media from virtual box I'll do that and then then I will start it back up Okay, we're restarting back up here And we'll see how the boot up time is Lately these Debian based distributions have been really good and that was quite spectacular actually I'm always impressed with this boot up the boot up times of Debian I don't know if it's just because maybe it's really good in virtual box for some reason And it's not good on hardware and I just haven't you ever noticed But it's always so good Okay And that's another instance of KDE Plasma starting up really really fast so The first run of Sparky, thank you for installing Sparky Linux This lets you fully upgrade the system Install missing languages language packages You could perform all the jobs one by one or select one only English there, okay, would you like to do it now? Sure, so we'll just do this here So that's just going to update the system And because it's a it's Debian testing You're going to have a lot more updates than what you would on Debian stable Because you're going to it's more of a rolling release It's not complete rule completely rolling they call it semi rolling We'll see how it goes Okay, now granted this was just released yesterday or today So I'm not expecting a ton of updates You're just yeah that didn't take very long at all All right APTUS locale will install missing locale packages for your language I don't see any of these things that I actually need here Yeah, I think I'm just gonna exit that because I don't need any other languages It's weird that this comes up and They should separate the updates in the languages thing So you can choose to do one or both maybe there was and I just missed it Okay, so it's definitely still doing something Okay, so let's first open up console here All right, and we'll see So first we'll do free dash M Kind of make actually make it so you can actually see it. We'll run that again It's running on about five hundred and six megabytes of RAM out of the round six that I gave it Or eight eight that I gave it. Excuse me That's About on par with for kd plasma these days. Let's do a new name dash a so we're running linux kernel 5.10 which is Not the most recent but pretty recent 5.11 just came out in like this january or so So we don't quite got the most recent kernel, but this is much more recent than what you would get on a stable version of debian So let's uh, see if htop is installed By default nope pseudo apt install So we got 67 tasks and 159 threads And still running about 512 megabytes of ram even with htop open so overall Very light on the resources at least at startup. So Let's go ahead and see I hate console All right, but so the Wallpaper is very dark, but Not the ugliest thing I've ever seen So Going through the applications. Let's first check out the internet and check firefox So Sparky linux sets sparky linux as a their own Home page, but it's not online. It's actually a file on your computer, which is interesting So let's see Uh, let's see here. You never remember where the about thing for fire for Yeah, there we go. So we got eight version 86 which is the most recent version of firefox, which is good Other versions of debian always use the long-term support or the Stable support release of firefox esr extended support release. I think I don't know So this one you'll actually get the long the most recent version this just looks like is just basically using the Standard breeze theme. This is no there's no custom theme here. No, that's not That surprising given that this is the first version of sparky that has kte. They probably haven't gone through and Actually considered, you know Making their own theme, you know, there's just something that they're haven't got to yet. Maybe There's nothing wrong with using just the regular stock kte stuff All right going to so we got icon browser for development. That's literally all there is here There's not even the cute normal cute stuff that you'd normally get one view for viewing images Obviously ray offers is going to be here ocular Scan light is going to be for scanning Internet kte connect and firefox. Obviously k get which is I believe for github I might be completely wrong on that um conversation. These are all kte stuff k torrent You can always tell it's kte stuff because obviously it has the k in the front. That's how they spell stuff A little weird. It's always been a little weird quite This is quite rss So they have their own rss reader that is installed by default. That's Interesting never actually seen it before. It's probably like a cute version of an rss feed reader Thunderbird pre-installed for email multimedia Eliza's for I believe this is uh a music player Yep I do remember that k3b is for I believe like cd stuff um Komoso, I don't is Komoso like for cds All right. So Komoso is actually for um like webcams. The reason why I won't show up here is because I'm in a virtual machine okay SparkyTube is going to be like a YouTube client kind of thing vlc is here Voko screen and g. I think that's like a screen recorder app Office the standard library office stuff science and math is gonna be a library office settings. There's normal kte setting stuff so overall Very impressed with the minimalism and stuff on this because you there's not a ton of extraneous stuff that they've installed. So really all they've installed is a Media player Eliza and I believe Eliza's actually going to be the default kte player from now on I might be wrong about that The sparky tube thing is something that they've installed in the rss reader that we saw earlier Other than that everything else is kte kind of specific. That's very nice Now it was like a 1.5 or 1.6 gigabyte iso But you gotta remember kte has a ton of dependencies. So that's the reason why the isos of all plasma distros are always going to be a little bit higher Just because they have to deal with all those dependencies and stuff You know something that I didn't see here. Where's discover? Discover is not installed by default. I don't see it. Let's look Wow, that's that's fascinating. Okay, so they have synaptic here as the package manager, but No discover that is an interesting choice now. I've never been a big fan of discover. I think it's Bloated I mean, I hate to use the word bloat for discover for anything But it's not great. I mean, it's definitely better than it now than it was even a year ago But it's still not of the application centers discovers by far the worst And I mean, I hate to say that because I love the kte guys, but discover is not good It just needs a complete revamp. It's interesting here that they've chosen to Use synaptic instead of having at least having discover available especially because Synaptic's not the most new user friendly way of installing software It's actually kind of confusing I've at least I've always thought it was kind of confusing. It's just kind of it's not I don't know I Also didn't see Okay, so this is I think this is gonna be for like What the hell is what is this? these like, um app images APT us AP I don't I'm just curious. I mean Okay, so that's not the way you install a So this is what they're using in place of discover I've never heard of this before. It's really I mean, it's not I mean It's a little weird Let's see what this says Sparky APT us app center lets you perform many jobs on packages in graphical modes such as popular applications Installations packages upgrades packages remove and much much more The application the application uses yad and html technology to work Yeah, it has been compiled with that that html. I got this stuff. I don't really need to know But it's not actually saying where it's installing this stuff from and I'm interested because Given the name of it. I just thought that maybe this was oh you want I'm dumb apt as an apt to get Seriously, Matt. What the hell's wrong with you? This instead of discover. I mean It's a little weird that this is this instead of discover But It's kind of cool. I guess because I mean it's something that belongs to them Because what I was going to say before is that I didn't see a way that you could choose different repos Because that's one of the things that I never get really get into on my debbing reviews Is that you can choose different repos to be like subscribed to and that will give you different Packages that are available to you so debbie intestines going to be attached to the more Rolling type repositories That allow you to get the more recent versions of software and sell packages from repositories edit custom repositories Okay, this is what I was looking for earlier That I said I didn't see so I think you can Add different repositories Edit custom repositories. Yeah, okay, there we go You can download the list the repository list list and it will actually see it from there Not the most user-friendly ever, but at least it's there Okay, and you can use you can remove you can clear the cache and stuff from this as well I'll admit that this is not the most well-designed thing in the history of the world. I mean The whole you know some of these things aren't even in line with each other but It's possible. This is like the first version of this that they've used. Maybe this is just what they used for KDE I'm not sure but It's actually I mean it's not It's not the worst thing I've ever seen In terms of applications selection I mean, let's look at um, actually, let's go back here to graphics is like a graph multimedia. Maybe No graphics is right here graphics editors So you got blender and dark table and inkscape image magic gem Which is already installed now. Let's see. We know wait a minute. Gimp was not installed. That was something different Fairly large selection, which is fairly impressive. I mean, there's a lot of stuff in the stock Debian repos. So it's not surprising that so like we have grand gun view. Let's see if it see it shows that it's installed Yep, it shows that it's installed. So it's so it's a it's a very oh it's an aware Package manager so it knows that what you have installed, which is good. Uh, I don't know That is the cleanest thing ever because you go to the an app page and you get all this The list of all the dependencies and stuff Usually, I mean, they should maybe collapse that or something so it's not right in your face. I don't know That's very It's an interesting package manager I'm kind. I mean, it's weird that it reloads Every time you switch between pages Isn't that weird That is a little weird. I mean, it's fast. I'm not sure if that's supposed to be like an animation or if it's just it's if it's actually Closing between pages and reopening Okay, well that is just well totally blown out there. Sorry about the camera there And it's gonna get cooler and it's gonna get cooler At least a little bit I think it's because I moved my microphone The the focus on this camera is just horrendous. I had to turn the light off. Okay, so that was just a very brief look At sparky lineage with kde first impressions If you like minimal kde where you can just go through and install the things you want to install And you don't have to put up with other people's Decisions on what comes with the distribution This was really good. I mean Obviously, I haven't used it for very long, but in terms of just a stock kde experience on a Rolling type release that's not arch This was very good. I was very impressed with the startup times I was very impressed with the startup with the software selections that they have even if the software store was a little weird Uh, I mean, it's not something that I've ever seen before. It's it's Interesting that they've chose to do do something custom when discovered does exist Now I didn't go through and test and see like I'm assuming like snap and flat packs are I wonder You want to let's go find out. I'm just curious I want to see if Either snaps or flat packs are installed. So let's do um console and do We'll zoom in here so snap Install mail spring Nope snaps not installed. So flat pack Flat pack is not installed either Okay, so they've chosen to instead of Almost every distribution has gone through and chosen aside in the wars between snap and flat pack if you can call it a war Um, they've appeared not to choose either side Which is an interesting choice so that that means the only way you Can install applications on sparky apparently without installing one of these. I mean you could install them obviously Uh, the only way you'd be able to do install software would be through apt or their package, you know Their GUI application, you know manager this apt center apt center get it uh, I actually finally did eventually get it. They should just call the apt center Seriously somebody has to have trademarked that Anyways, so like I said it was a good little distribution if you're if you're looking towards debian for a Distro and you don't want to use stable, but want something that's you know, not You know not stable you can tell it's really late at night. Anyways, this would be a good choice I think now obviously I've only scratched the surface. I'm sure that in the comments below somebody's going to say Well sparky has this amazing feature that you didn't even cover This was just a for my first experience with sparky. So Uh feel if you've used sparky before feel free in the comments below to tell me What's great about it that I missed out on because I'm changed or I'll come back to it eventually and The more I know the better these reviews, you know become so if You feel the need you can follow us on twitter at twitter.com slash linux cast I really do got to come up with a better transition between Ending the video and getting into the social. I'll work on it. I'll be more professional or something. I don't know unlikely Uh, you can also follow us on facebook at facebook.com slash linux cast And if you want to support the channel you can do so by subscribing and hitting the hitting the notification bell icon Or by going to patreon.com slash linux cast where you can get all sorts of perks including polls And blog posts and early access to our podcasts and eventually early access to all of our videos So that's patreon.com slash linux cast and speaking of patreons patrons patrons I'm never gonna get that right either. I'd like to thank our producers devon c marcus b and marik m Again, sorry marik if I'm Butchering your name You should definitely get on patreon patreon and let me know how to pronounce it Otherwise, I'm just gonna keep changing how I pronounce it eventually. I'll get it right. So anyways Thanks for your support. Thanks for everybody for watching. I'll see you next time