Gear

Extra Equipment

Extend your Gear

Flatpak

This is an alternative modern package manager. It is able to install applications in a containerized way. SpaceFun comes already prepared with everything you need.

Fire up a terminal and execute the following command to add the Flathub Repository. This is a central place which can also be called an App Store.

flatpak --user remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

You just have to do this one time. Now you can install any app you find on Flathub.

Let's give it a try. Search for PySolFC on the Flathub page. This is a great (if not the greatest) Solitaire collection.

Scroll down the page until you see the Manual Install instructions.

Copy the command listed there and paste it into your Terminal. In this case:

flatpak install flathub io.sourceforge.pysolfc.PySolFC

After re-login, you can find PySolFC in the Games section within the menu.

DPI

You got one of this modern computers with high resolution displays and everything looks tiny. Don't worry. You can change this by adjusting the DPI value.

Open a Terminal and enter the following command:

sudo nano /etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf

This will open an easy editor. Scroll down to the end until you see the #xft-dpi. Remove the # sign in front and add a value, e.g. 120

xft-dpi=120

It should look like this:

Now save the changes using Ctrl+O and exit the editor with Ctrl+X.

Another file has to be edited. Open nano again, but first make sure you are in your home directory using cd:

cd
nano .Xresources

Hint: you can also edit the file directly like this: nano ~/.Xresources

Add the following line to the file:

Xft.dpi: 120

Save with Ctrl+O and exit the editor with Ctrl+X. Now log out and login again. Do you notice the difference? If it's still too small, repeat the steps above, but increase the value from 120 to e.g. 144. Find out what fits with you or use a DPI-Calculator.

Firefox

If you want to use a full-fledged Browser and your hardware is strong enough, Firefox is a good choice. You can install it using the package manager Synaptic which you find in the Preferences menu or within a Terminal.

Latest Firefox on Rolling

For the latest version of the browser, which is only available on the rolling edition of SpaceFun, type:

sudo apt install firefox firefox-l10n-de

firefox-l10n-de is the German language pack. Replace -de with the language code of your choice. Display all available language packs with the following command:

apt-cache search firefox-l10n

Firefox ESR on Stable

Only the long-term-support version of the browser is available on the stable edition of SpaceFun, which is called Firefox ESR. The installation is similar to the rolling edition, but the packages are named firefox-esr instead of firefox:

sudo apt install firefox-esr firefox-esr-l10n-de

Hint: On the rolling edition of SpaceFun, both firefox and firefox-esr are available. Choose what you prefer.

After installation, you find the browser in the Internet menu. Once you open it, you might notice that the title bar looks a little strange. Open the hamburger menu and select More Tools / Customize toolbar.

Check Title bar in the lower-right corner and click Done.

The following Add-ons are recommended for using with Firefox:

Privacy:

Language:

Touchpad

Your touchpad should work out-of-the-box. It still might need some tweaking.

synaptics

Space Fun makes use of the xserver-xorg-input-synaptics driver by default, as it still works the best with most Netbooks.

To add additional features, create a configuration file as follows:

sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/70-synaptics.conf

Add the following content:

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "touchpad catchall"
    Driver "synaptics"
    MatchIsTouchpad "on"
    Option "VertScrollDelta" "-27"
    Option "HorizScrollDelta" "-27"
    Option "TapButton1" "1"
    Option "TapButton2" "3"
    Option "TapButton3" "2"
EndSection

Write out the changes using Ctrl+O and exit the editor with Ctrl+X.

This enables Natural Scrolling and Tab-to-Click.

  • One Finger Tab: for left mouse button
  • Two Finger Tab: for right mouse button
  • Three Finger Tab for middle mouse button

The latter you can also use to paste text, you have previously marked with the mouse.

Re-login and see if it works for you. If yes, you can skip the rest of this section.

libinput

Alternatively, you can make use of the more modern libinput drivers. To do so, remove the synaptics driver and a previously created synaptics configuration file

sudo apt install xserver-xorg-input-libinput
sudo apt remove --purge xserver-xorg-input-synaptics
sudo rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/70-synaptics.conf

Now create a configuration file as follows:

sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/40-libinput.conf

Fill it with the following content:

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "libinput touchpad catchall"
    MatchIsTouchpad "on"
    MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
    Driver "libinput"
    Option "NaturalScrolling" "True"
    Option "Tapping" "on"
    Option "ClickMethod" "clickfinger"
EndSection

Save the changes using Ctrl+O and exit the editor with Ctrl+X.

After re-login, the touchpad should support Tabbing and Natural Scrolling.

AI

Everybody is talking about it: AI. Believe it or not, you can also have it on SpaceFun. Follow the Flatpak instructions above and install Bavarder:

flatpak install flathub io.github.Bavarder.Bavarder

Uplink: Hacker Elite

Do you ever wanted to become a real Hacker? Then Uplink is the game for you. You can buy your DRM-free copy at GOG.

Open the file manager and right-click on the installer. Select Properties and open the Permissions Tab. Choose Owner only within the Execute field.

Now click on the Installer and choose Execute. Walk through the installation assistant. You will find the game within the Games category in the menu.

OpenRCT2

OpenRCT2 is an open source re-implementation of the famous RollerCoaster Tycoon® 2, a game where you can finally fulfill your lifelong dream of creating thrilling rides. It requires the original game assets, which can be obtained on GOG.

Download the offline version of the game and launch OpenRCT2. An assistant lets you point to the installation file and extracts the necessary content.

Debian Frontend

dpkg is known for it's good and interative Frontends, allowing you to specify configuration options of choice. In order not to disturb during updates using the graphical Update-Manager, this frontend has been silences by default in /etc/environment.d/00debconf.conf. Any time you still want it to be shown, simply unset the environment variable DEBIAN_FRONTEND.

Here is an example:

unset DEBIAN_FRONTEND
dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration

Besides that, /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/00local contains the following options:

Dpkg::Options {
   "--force-confdef";
   "--force-confold";
}

Depending on your needs, you might want to disable those by simply removing that file.

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