Bruce's Custom Sparky Gnome (Unofficial Sparky Gnome 3 Spin)

eightbit · May 13, 2016, 02:44:15 PM

I am Bruce (obviously) and I have been working on a Gnome spin of Sparky for quite some time now. I started with the minimalCLI version of Sparky and build up from there. I spoke with pavroo and he has been so kind as to give me the OK to share it with you guys and gals. I apologize for the lack of screenshots. This is a quick post/write up before I am off to work this morning. I will try to get some up soon.

There have been many many modifications and changes to the software packages to suit my needs...as well as many tweaks and adjustments. I have put a LOT of love into this distro and not only merely built it but also use it on a daily basis. This was the best way to find and crush any bugs/errors with the packages. There are also applications here you will not find in the repo's such as SimpleScreenRecorder and I do believe this is the only distro to date that includes Retroarch.

Here are some of the highlights (although there are more):

Gnome 3.20.2 and kernel 4.6.0.1
Many tweaks to the Gnome interface to make it much more usable
Google Chrome Beta as default browser
PCManFM as default file manager with added custom actions (open as root, etc)
Engrampa as default archive manager
Retroarch v1.3.4 with all assets and cores....emulator build from source on Sparky
Other emulation goodies (Mame, Vice, Frotz, Atari800, FS-UAE, Dolphin, PCSX2)
WPS Office as default office application
SMPlayer as default video player
Quod Libet for your music collection!
Many multimedia tools (Kodi, Handbrake, Openshot, Audacity, etc)
Wine (both development and stable versions), Playonlinux, Steam, Dropbox, Tor Browser
Vast collection of screensavers via Xscreensaver (including the "Really Slick" screensaver package activated in xscreensaver)
Lots of under the hood stuff so that you will never run into a situation (or hopefully never) where you can't get the job done without downloading something. Great for offline use too!
i386 arch enabled in the 64-bit environment and libs necessary for gaming (Steam, GOG) pre-installed. Just install your game and play!
And much much more...

I wanted to do things a little differently (using different applications that in my opinion perform better than the mainstream apps) and wanted to have everything I ever use (office-wise, multimedia, gaming, etc etc) so I would be ready to rock and roll right from a live disk.

Well, if you would like to try it, it is 64-bit only and will work for Legacy and UEFI systems depending on how it is written to the flash drive. It weighs in at just under 4GB. It was created using Systemback, so the installer is different but pretty straight forward. Please be aware that this is an unofficial Sparky spin which is NOT made by SparkyLinux 'dev' team members. Please run this on real hardware (not a virtual machine) as I personally have had no luck running this or many other Gnome 3 based distros in virtualbox or vmplayer. An incredible amount of work went in to this to make it as full featured as possible for people like me that enjoy a fully functional OS and also love emulation and gaming...while also making it fast and light on resources. Let me know what you think:

On Sourceforge:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/bruce-s-custom-sparky-gnome/

KNOWN ISSUES:

Retroarch will not launch if not using a proprietary driver or open source driver with some type of hardware acceleration.

Steam gets two errors and asks to install some dependencies when first launched. Ignore it/close both windows and steam works as expected.

eightbit · May 18, 2016, 02:06:35 AM

Links temporarily removed as I have updated the ISO and am adding the new updated version to dropbox.

eightbit · May 21, 2016, 01:36:27 AM

Links updated, kernel updated to 4.5.0.2 and many applications updated. Please try it and I would greatly appreciate some input on what people think!

eightbit · May 26, 2016, 04:21:22 AM

Lots of views. Anyone try it yet? I have fixed and updated a lot of stuff and will provide a June release probably the first or second week. I would really love some input and perhaps some suggestions if you find something "out of place". This has been a very long time in the making...

The June release will remove some redundant applications, include the latest updates, change some apps over that I find are not as well suited as some others I have found, add some new stuff and overall tighten up the experience. It is very good now (it is my primary daily OS) but I see spots that could be better tweaked and am working on that at the moment. If you try the May release I would however highly suggest to perform an update after install as the updates fix some GTK3 theme bugs.

eightbit · June 02, 2016, 06:44:07 AM

Removed links pending update....unless nobody cares? Over 350 views and not a peep :(

banerd · June 02, 2016, 03:04:23 PM

i,ve got some time. add the link .i,ll give it a try.

eightbit · June 03, 2016, 04:38:40 AM

I appreciate it. I just built the new release and am just testing things here and there. Looks fine so far. I should have it up to dropbox and linked here in a day or two.

eightbit · June 05, 2016, 06:21:01 AM

New links up. A lot changed/fixed...and redundant apps removed with the kind assistance of pavroo. Please try it out!

banerd · June 08, 2016, 03:45:10 PM

download Failed, >:( tried 6 times.. :P

eightbit · June 08, 2016, 07:05:24 PM

Ugh. It must be Dropbox...and I pay for it too. Does anyone have a suggestion of an alternate free service that can store a 4GB file for sharing?

banerd · June 08, 2016, 07:10:22 PM

has anyone successfully downloaded? i will try again.

pavroo · June 09, 2016, 12:06:06 AM

@eightbit
Create a new project (and an account if you don't have it yet) at sourceforge.net - it's for free.
Or I will add you to our small team at the sourceforge, and the ftp access lets you upload it to Sparky official project's page's subfolder.

eightbit · June 10, 2016, 03:49:45 AM

Quote from: pavroo on June 09, 2016, 12:06:06 AM
@eightbit
Create a new project (and an account if you don't have it yet) at sourceforge.net - it's for free.
Or I will add you to our small team at the sourceforge, and the ftp access lets you upload it to Sparky official project's page's subfolder.

I set up an account and page awhile back but I couldn't figure out how to publish the ISO. I connected to SF via FTP and uploaded the ISO successfully, but it would not show up on the page. I'm all new the SF. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated! (or just simple FTP info to upload this to your page)

eightbit · June 11, 2016, 04:31:05 AM

Finally added to Sourceforge. Link in the first post!

pavroo · June 11, 2016, 01:37:55 PM

Cool!
I have created a new sub-page to be more visible for newcomers too http://sparkylinux.org/download/community/