Sparky 6.5 Minimal GUI - Conclusion
It's become apparent that Sparky 6.5 is Sparky 6.5, regardless of the DE (or lack thereof) being used in a particular edition. Thus, even though Sparky 6.5 Minimal GUI is not as fancy as, say, Sparky 6.5 Plasma, its capabilities are based on the same OS foundation. Thus, there's nothing that the Plasma edition could do, that the Minimal edition can't do. Since that's the case, I spent a little less time on this review than on the last one.
I installed Thunderbird and configured two email accounts, for example, but I did not add two Google calendar accounts to it using the Lightning add-on. I'm convinced that I would have had no problem doing that if I'd wanted to. Similarly, I installed Vivaldi, added Lastpass, and did a full sync, resulting in a Start Page full of shortcuts. But I didn't take the time to create tab stacks for them all.
I created four virtual desktops instead of my usual eight, and I did not bother to modify /etc/fstab and add my NAS shares via nfs. I have no doubt that would have worked just fine, since I had no trouble at all with that when I reviewed the Plasma edition.
CONCLUSION
As a result of what I've done and seen, I'm thoroughly convinced that Sparky's minimal edition is virtually the same as their Plasma edition (and probably any of their many other editions) except for matters of look and feel. By skipping the DE altogether, their developers have created a very capable and fast OS that maintains a very small footprint.
Even with a new background, two large applications installed and configured, and nothing removed, minimal is still quite a bit smaller than the Plasma edition that I reviewed previously. Configured this way, and with the default installed applications and easy access to the entire Debian repository, a Sparky Minimal installation would provide someone with limited hardware a very capable daily-driver. Here's one last look at the applications menu.
And, of course, the neofetch information:
I notice that it shows here that the LTS kernel is used. I'd clicked on the web site to select the rolling release, but selecting this edition afterwards must have changed that. No worries, though, this has been fun.
