Gear

Extra Equipment

Extend your Gear

  1. Flatpak
  2. Firefox
  3. Touchpad
  4. AI
  5. Uplink
  6. OpenRCT2
  7. Dpkg Options

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.

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.

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

Privacy:

Language:

Even though it's in German, I can highly recommend the video in which I show my personal favorite Firefox AddOns.

Touchpad

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

synaptics

Older Netbooks like Eee PCs might work better with a tochpad driver called xserver-xorg-input-synaptics.

To add this driver, first install the relevant package

sudo apt install xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

Now, 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.

Restart your computer and see if it works for you. If not, you can switch back to the default libinput driver.

libinput

If you face any issues using synaptics, you can make use of the more modern default libinput drivers. To do so, remove the previously created synaptics configuration file:

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

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.

Dpkg Options

 The following options are set in /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/00local :

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

Those settings ensure, that during an upgrade your existing configuration files are kept, whenever possible.

Besides that, by default, you would be prompted which services should be restarted after an upgrade. This functionality has been adjusted, so the relevant services are just listed. To achieve this, a config file /etc/needrestart/conf.d/no-prompt.conf has been created with the following content:

$nrconf{restart} = 'l';

Instead of 'l' which stands for 'list', you can choose 'a' to automatically restart the services when necessary to 'i' to revert to the interactive prompt.

Depending on your needs, you might want to disable those features by simply removing the above files.

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