Give me advice!

[ramiroelliot]

Hello everyone,

i was recently on the search for a Debian based Distro, as i have huge issues with anything Ubuntu based (The Battery Icon updates ver Slow).

And i found the Debian based Distro named ,,Sparky Linux". I tried it and found it really, great. It's really fast on my old ThinkPad L530, that i still use as my Daily Driver.

Here are the Specs: Inteln i3 3310M Intel HD 4000 8GB DDR3 RAM 250 GB Intenso SSD

I really like my ThinkPad and its running great with Sparky.

But I really never found someone using it as a daily driver. I think its not really know in the Community.

And now i wonder, what are your thoughts on the Distro. Is anyone here Daily Driving it? And what are other great Distro for older Machines like mine.

Thank You for taking your Time to read all that.

[frank]

Hey Ramiro,
Thank you for joining us at the forum and giving Sparky a try!
I use it as my daily driver on 3 of my 4 laptops and on my desktop I use the semi-rorring XFCE version of Spary and it has been working great. 2 of my Laptops are HP 635 which are very old dual core AMD they have 8gb of memory and 500 sd HD the Other laptop is a LAtitude 5480 i5
same as you I have found that Sparky is the best for old computers.
Hope that helps you. And if you have any question here we are to help you in any way we can.

[jymm]

I think it is great distro. It is about the only rolling release I have used without it breaking on an update some software I needed so became a deal breaker. That said desktops make a difference.I have not had any major problems with it.

I use the Mate desktop which has the same battery issue. It seems to be a Mate problem, and I have had the same problem on Ubuntu Mate, Mint Mate, Parrot Mate, Spiral Linux and here on Sparky Mate. the regular icon doesn't give you a value unless click on it, and the added applet keeps not loading or crashing.

The only one I know that has solved that is Ubuntu Mate, which now uses Ayantana indicators. You can use dconf to set the battery to display percentage, time or both on the panel.

I can't answer for the Xfce, KDE, or LXQt as I only use the Mate desktop. As you can see though, the forum is extremely quiet. I am not sure if that is the Distro is so solid or if  there are just not that many users.
That said you could always get help on the Debian forum for most problems if you can't find it here, it is pretty solidly Debian with some nice different features. Your experience level might determine if this is the distro for you or not.