Tuesday, June 27, 2017

How to autologin on Debian 9 (Stretch)

Autologin means than when Debian runs a session starts without entering any password.
This is very comfortable, but it implies a security risk because if someone has access to our computer can access its content, so it would be very interesting for a public computer without personal data for generic use but not for a laptop for example.

In any case if we access by network, for example by ssh, the system will continue asking for the password.

To get this in Debian Stretch we modify the /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf file and change the lines:

#autologin-user=
#autologin-user-timeout=0

for:

autologin-user=your_user
autologin-user-timeout=0

Simple and fast.

Artículo original en castellano

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

SupertuxKart: All Tente 3D karts and track in one file

SuperTuxKart, is a funny and amazing game, freegame and avalaible for a lot of operating systems.
Tente was a Spanish construction game with bricks very similar to a famous Danish one.

SuperTuxKart Wikia Tente 3D

Now you can download a lot of karts and a track to enjoy with Tente vehicles, Now that STK is in fashion.

#0: Download STK-Tente3D pack

You don't have to download the vehicles one by one, you just need download one file:
Although a file with the installation instructions is included, I will explain how to install and use here:
 

#1: Install SuperTuxKart

If we use GNU/Linux we can find the version more adapted to our distro in their official repositories, in the case of Ubuntu or Debian we would look for it in its software center or by the command:
sudo apt-get install supertuxkart
If our distro doesn't include the game in its repositories (very strange) or we still use Windows o Mac OS X we can download in STK page.

#2: Add the karts and the track

Uncompress the STK-Tente3D ZIP in the folder where is the STK resources, in GNU/Linux is:
/home/youruser/.local/share/supertuxkart/addons/ (only for your user)
or
/usr/share/games/supertuxkart/data/ (copy them as root, for all the users).
If we use Windows uncompress in:
C:\Program Files\SuperTuxKart
In some Windows 'Program Files' is translated into your language.
I don't know details about OS X because I don't use Apple but I suppose that might be ver similar than GNU/Linux.

#3: Run and solving problems if they are

In any case we will have a direct access to the program, either on the desktop or in the menu, so by clicking on it we will launch the game.
If we have a very old computer, it may not start or delay a long time, as each kart is a folder inside the kart subfolder, just delete it to disappear from the game. In this case we could remove all the additions and add until it stops working.

Interesting links and advanced information

 

Artículo original en castellano

Sunday, June 18, 2017

Amstrad PCW emulation in GNU/Linux

The possibility of running software Amstrad PCW in a GNU/Linux is not well known because there are usually no emulators available in the official repositories of most distributions, unlike in other platforms such as commodore , spectrum , ataris , etc...
 

But there is an emulator for Amstrad PCW called Joyce, that works very well and we can install doing in any GNU/Linux (including raspberry pi), just follow these instructions:

  1. Download lastest version for Unix.
  2. Uncompress this file in a folder, for example in /opt . You can rename the subfolder as pcw:
    cd /opt
    sudo tar -zxvf joyce-2.2.7.tar.gz
    mv joyce-2.2.7 pcw
  3. Compile the code (we'll need libxml2-dev pack):
    sudo apt-get install libxml2-dev
    sudo chmod +rw pcw
    cd pcw
    ./configure
    make
    sudo make install
  4. You also need an image of CP/M plus boot disk, copy it on $HOME/Joyce/Boot folder and rename as boot?.img where ? is a number from 0 to 9.
  5. You'll need a real PCW to use them legality (A friend presents me one), in any case you need search in another site or get from your own PCW with the necessary tools, I can't provide a link to these files.
  6. You can run the emulator with this command:
    xjoyce
Artículo original en castellano

Saturday, June 17, 2017

New blog for best articles of M.O.L.

Here you will see most interesting articles of the blog "Malagueños Originales y Libres" translated into English.

M.O.L. is a Spanish blog about open source, GNU/Linux, hardware, raspberry pi, retro-computing, Tente 3D, etc...

The articles will be translated by his author Jesús B. (cpcbegin) and his wife Eva C.