Another Distro that offers an opt out of the Linux ‘Pesky Password’ ‘n a lot more. ‘Old Time’ Linux indoctrination said the password was for “safety” in order to stop users from destroying their computer system, and that talking point has stuck for over 20 years. Maybe it started to protect commercial stuff like servers, before Linux actually had some Desktop OSes for home computer users…I dunno. SparkyLinux has you create a regular user during installation, but they also let you create a password for the “administrator account” in that same installation window. At the login greeting window you just enter “root” as the user ‘n then provide the “password” you entered for “administrator account” during installation. Fast ‘n Easy install.

BTW, the standard user gets an account created during installation, *AND* that creates a password that gives the standard user full access to the system…apparently ‘Old Time’ Linux users don’t realize that their ‘Beloved’ “safety” goes out the window at that point. No arguing with them on that point tho since it is branded into their brains forever. Me, personally, on my *OWN* computer/s I don’t want to be harassed with a Linux ‘Pesky Password’ every time I want to do something.

SparkyLinux offers a lot of choices, from Stable, to Oldstable, to (Semi-)Rolling, and to Development images. Stable offers 5.12 LXQt ‘n 5.12 Xfce in 32 ‘n 64 bit versions and three other various versions that can be checked out…I tried the 5.12 MinimalGUI, but didn’t care for it…the 5.12 LXQt seemed ‘clunky’ but was OK ‘n probably due to my unfamiliarity with the LXQt DE.

The Rolling 2020.09 offered LXQt 64bit, MATE 64bit ‘n Xfce 64bit DE’s…I went with the MATE and it was fine. They also offered the MinimalGUI ‘n MinimalCLI editions. Then Special Editions like the 2020.09 GameOver ‘n Multimedia editions – plus – 2020.09 Rescue in 32 ‘n 64 bits…I have an old sparkylinux-5.7-x86_64-rescue iso that I’ve used briefly (Puppy Linux is much better for rescue duty).

Hold on, I’m still not done, i.e. there is the Sparky oldstable edition with more choices. Am sure I missed some, but am not going to test everything they offer!?! Sparky also says it “supports about 20 desktop environments and window managers,” so perhaps I should up my estimate of 2000++ Linux Distros to 3000 or so, huh. Check out the Sparky About section for more info.

I was going to do more tests, but Sparky makes the system info too hard to find, e.g. whar’s the Ryzen 9 3900X info … whar’s the GeForce GTX 1660 info … whar’s the speakers ‘n sound!?! When you switch from root to standard user, the speaker icon is there, and a music player will play a song, but it has no sound when testing the speakers in settings. It offers “About SparkyLinux” w/ info on OS ‘n kernel, but nothing on the hardware. It’s just not up to par with any of the Top Linux Distros…heck, I could suggest 10 Midlevel Linux Distros that would make Sparky Linux look ridiculous. Maybe if I used Synaptic Package Manager (the best thing I found w/ Sparky besides the no ‘Pesky Password’ option) to get a better DE like GNOME, KDE or Cinnamon it would work better, but I question any Distro when it doesn’t provide an easy way of finding ‘n showing a computer’s System Info, and not recognizing basic computer speakers and/or not being able to test them.

Nice little Distro for any users who want to spend time tinkering w/ ‘n tweaking their OS, but definitely not for me. Will add it to the Distros w/ *NO* ‘Pesky Passwords’…

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