SparkyLinux 2026.09 “Tiamat” was released on September 23. This is Sparky’s rolling line, built on Debian “Forky” testing plus Sparky’s own testing repositories as of September 21. It is separate from the stable line that restored 32-bit support in 8.4.

The new Labwc edition

The notable addition is a Labwc edition. Labwc is a wlroots-based stacking compositor for Wayland that deliberately imitates Openbox: the same right-click root menu, similar XML configuration, and the same “windows float and overlap” behaviour rather than tiling.

That makes it a natural match for Sparky. The distro has shipped a minimal Openbox image for years, and the Labwc edition is the Wayland version of the same idea. Both are MinimalGUI images: a small graphical base from which you install whichever larger desktop you want through Sparky’s tools.

The Labwc image leaves out the usual administration apps (APTus, Synaptic, Gufw, and the Calamares installer). You install from a terminal with:

sudo sparky-installer

Raspberry Pi OS moved to Labwc for its Wayland session in 2024, and it has become the default answer to “what is Openbox on Wayland?” If you want the difference between a stacking compositor and a full desktop spelled out, see our desktop environments guide. For the tiling alternatives, our new niri and Hyprland guide compares the popular options.

Editions and versions

Edition	Version
KDE Plasma	6.7.4
Xfce	4.20.1
LXQt	2.4
MATE	1.26.1
Openbox (MinimalGUI)	3.6.1
Labwc (MinimalGUI)	0.20.2
MinimalCLI	text mode

All editions ship Linux 7.2, LibreOffice 26.8, Firefox 140.16.0 ESR, Thunderbird 140.14.0 ESR, and Calamares 3.4.3. Images are 64-bit only.

Upgrading

Existing Sparky rolling installs do not need to reinstall: a normal package upgrade brings the system to the same state. The ISOs are for new installs.

sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade

As with any Debian testing-based system, read what full-upgrade wants to remove before you confirm. Our LTS vs rolling release guide covers the trade-offs.