14 DAY TRIAL // The developers of the SparkyLinux distribution have announced on September 3, 2015, the availability for download and testing of a new edition for their Linux kernel-based operating system, SparkyLinux Rescue.
SparkyLinux 4.1 Rescue Edition aims to be an all-in-one Live CD or Live USB that will contain all sorts of utilities (see below for the full list) for system administration, rescue, and recovery operations. The distro is currently based on the SparkyLinux 4 "Tyche" release, as well as on the Debian GNU/Linux 9.0 "Stretch" operating system, with which it's fully compatible.
"There is available a new, special edition of SparkyLinux 4.1 RC Rescue. The system is based on SparkyLinux 4 'Tyche' and fully compatible with Debian testing 9 'Stretch'. SparkyLinux Rescue is an operating system which works in Live DVD/USB mode only. The Live system contains a large set of tools for scanning and fixing filets, partitions and operating systems installed on hard drives," reads the announcement.
If you're wondering what's inside SparkyLinux 4.1 Rescue Edition, we can tell you that the distro comes with popular, consecrated open-source software like Gparted, Parted, Clonezilla, TeskDisk, FSArchive, luckyBackup, Partclone, Partimage (Server also), DDRescue (DDRescue-GUI also), Grsync, Boot Repair, Cfdisk, Fdisk, Gdisk, Disktype, Chroot, Cryptsetup, VeraCrypt, zuluMount, zuluCrypt, Tcplay, PhotoRec, and Wipe.
Furthermore, the Chkrootkit, ClamAV, ClamTK, Rkhunter, Samba, APT, Zypper, YUM, RPM, TeamViewer (only the installer), PCManFM, Tux Commander, Xarchiver, Shred, Chroot, Gigolo, Rdesktop (Rdesktop-GUI also), and Remmina software also included in the Live CD, along with the in-house built Eraser (Sparky Eraser) and Chrooter (Sparky Chrooter) tools, as well as the Ophcrack Microsoft Windows passwords cracker.
Release Candidate available for download now
Another great thing about the SparkyLinux 4.1 Rescue Edition operating system is that it offers support for numerous UNIX, Linux, Windows, and OS X file systems, including EXT3, EXT4, BTRFS, ReiserFS, Reiser4, XFS, JFS, UFS, LVM2, NILFS2, MINIX, F2FS, NTFS, exFAT, VFAT, MS DOS, HPFS, HFS, HFS+, Time Machine FS, UDF, and ISO 9660, which is also known as CDFS (Compact Disc File System). On the desktop front, the distro uses the lightweight Openbox window manager. It is also very important to know that the Sparky Chrooter utility will allow you to chroot into most GNU/Linux distributions.
A first Release Candidate version of SparkyLinux 4.1 Rescue Edition is available for download right from Softpedia for 64-bit (x86_64) and 32-bit (i586 non-PAE) hardware architectures. When testing it, please try to keep in mind that it's a pre-release version, not suitable for production environments. Once again, please note that SparkyLinux 4.1 Rescue Edition has been designed from the offset to run only in live mode, so you can write the ISO image(s) to either USB flash drives or DVD discs.