Sparky reviewed on distrowatch.com

[blaze]

What the thread title says. Read and make up your own mind, might be that there are a couple of points made.  :-\

http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20171113#sparky

[tenfoot]

Yes, I did read that review and can only say that I experienced no problems during my installation of Sparky v5.0 with the MATE DE.  Must admit, I hadn't realised there were such a number of alternative desktops. However, if the reviewer had installed one of the more common DE maybe the review would have been more positive.

I just hope that people reading the review are not put off giving SparkLinux a try. After some 10 years with LinuxMint, I changed to SparkLinux as my default distribution and have nothing but praise for it.  For the few problems I have experienced and, let's face it, one must expect things to go awry from time to time if using the "testing" branch of an o.s., I have always received prompt and helpful advice from pavroo and others, which resulted in overcoming the issue.  What more can one ask?

[blaze]

I must say that I agree with you tenfoot, he choose two of the more less common desktops to try. He would have profited of choosing something more mainstream probabaly. My guess is though that he wanted to "test" and therefore choose what he choose.

I do disagree with that the download page is confusing though, it makes sense to me. But I guess that it might be confusing with all the choices for someone that is more of a newcomer to Linux, and Debian of course.

Thanks for the input tenfoot. :)

[penguin]

I have tested I lot linux distros. A lot. I have tested Sparky Rolling , roundly 1 year and half ago.Because of many updates each day that some times have broke or non compatibility with existing packages, I quit and decided to keep ARCH as rolling and MX Linux as stable.I have tried MX Linux some times before, but also I have quited from. When Sparky announced stable version , I installed it.
Being a distro eater/tester and distro user are different things, Different feelings. Does not matter also if you are an experienced Linux user. I am not experienced Linux user, but with enough knowledge gain during last 2 years, I can be a good Linux tester. During last year I have refined my knowledges about Linux and Linux Distros. Now I have, Sparky Stable, MX Linux Stable (16.1) and ARCH Rolling. Now I can see difference between Sparky and MX Linux.Both are Debian Based, but Sparky has a newer base. Congratulation for this!  Openly I will say my opinion. Sparky is great but Sparky offers many versions similar what Gecko Linux do (that also is great job done by someone).Pavroo is doing a great job and is very responsible, but Sparky Community is small. I think that if Sparky would offer just only XCFE or Mate or LXQT ( I would prefer XCFE) of Stable and Rolling the community would be much bigger and for sure much more productive, because of narrow specter of desktops. It is a lot of work to maintain all versions ( desktops) and Stable, Rolling and Unstable versions.Heroic work by pavroo. This is my opinion. Focusing strongly to one desktop will bring much more benefits. Also some tools can be applied (bring to) to Sparky by other Linux (lets say by MX Linux). For example MX Repo Tool (a wide software center including stable,testing and debian backports). So...imagine to have a mixing (implementing) of the best of MX Linux (or other distro tools , some of them from different puppies Linux and etc.) with best of Sparky, would be a very great Linux Debian Distro.
Anyway. Thanks a lot pavroo, for your work.

[blaze]

Let 's just flip the whole idea of too many choices in Sparky. Instead look at it the other way around, that all the many choices is what Sparky is all about.

It means that the user get to make a choice of what he/she wants, and take responsibility of said choice. That also means that depending of choice there are more or less work with the install, stable, testing or depending of which DE is chosen.

And as long as the boss is happy with the present situation, I am also. Might be that there are some loose ends here and there, maybe things are not perfect. just like life can be a mess sometimes, so can a Linux install. ;)

A distro with a single choice where the dev/s can spend all their resources on one editon will naturally be more thought through, more slick, with more specific features and typical solutions.

What is typical for Sparky is all the choices, the possibility to customize your Sparky install the way you want it.

So dear Sparky user, in the end it is up to you to decide what you want out of it. Pavroo provides you with many possibilities, what you make out of it, is up to you.

   

[blaze]

If one gets a negative review, one should use it to reflect over if it is possible to use it to something positive.

[pavroo]

That's true.

[Reziac]

When I last went through some 150+ distros seeking a linux I could love, Sparky was among the handful I liked well enough to give a second look (tho I wound up going with PCLOS-TDE). So when I saw the DistroWatch news item, I had to come check it out.

And that's exactly where I came to a halt. I'm good with rolling, and I know I want pretty much full-featured with the usuals preinstalled, and I prefer the menu-driven end of the desktop ecosystem... but do I want plain LXQt, GameOver, or Multimedia? which one comes with JWM etc as desktop options? On a slow connection where an ISO is an all-day event, you worry about these things. So yes, a little more description would be nice. The package list is helpful but only insofar as one knows which app goes by what esoteric name (and the formatting SF sent me was illegible due to linewrap hell).

Now, I'll probably just snag them all, since I'll be trying them Live off a USB stick, but most people just want to try one, not every variant in sight.

It might also be useful for the less-hardware-techy users to have a brief "which do I pick?" for "i686 non-pae" vs "x86_64/amd64".  Might be better to label 'em "32bit" and "64bit" which most, even non-techies, understand well enough to pick the correct one.

I realise Sparky is aimed at more-techy users, but (speaking as one with no patience for difficult software) I found it attractive as a newer-user distro, so why discourage them?

I do want to thank the mirrors that offer direct links to the ISOs... Sourceforge doesn't get along well with my download manager, and there's nothing more annoying than getting 3.9GB as a 4GB download monopolizes your connection for 10 hours, then having it break.

[Cruzado]

If one gets a negative review, one should use it to reflect over if it is possible to use it to something positive.

That's the only way, if you want to progress. No point doing anything else.