Is there an offline option which functions like Chess.com's "Analysis Board" ?  If you know of more than one please list them all because I need to run it in Linux and not everything does. 

The simplest option might be to open a chess.com analysis board window and never close it. :-)

You may want to get SCID (Shane's Chess Information Database), which is very good for Linux and allows FEN pasting, moving pieces around and engine analysis (I use Crafty in Linux).

You can search chess.com downloads section here

Try xboard, perhaps along with GNU Chess.

yup!  "xboard -ncp" seems to open a board allowing you to enter moves for both sides (without computer analysis) while checking for illegal moves.  it doesn't seem to have a "current" reset position that I can find but it does have forward / back / start / end options for stepping around.

I thought of that but when "analysis board" is unassociated with a current game it seems to run slow - not snappy like I want it to be - I have the same problem with "Game Explorer" - seems sluggish.

The only way I know (and I may be wrong) to reset a position in xboard is to load the FEN again. xboard is not the best and definitely not the best-looking, but it's good enough for a simple analysis board though.

Braznik, you can just go here:

http://www.chess.com/analysis-board-editor.html

You could either just leave that page open all the time, or I'm guessing there is a not terribly difficult way to download what you need and host that page on your local machine if you want.

if you're running Linux, try entering "xboard -ncp" without the quotes in a terminal window.  you get an opening position and can enter moves for both sides , step forward / back / etc.  very snappy !! 

Does it store variations, allow you to add text commentary, and output PGN? These are the kind of features the chess.com analysis board has that I thought you were going for.

I don't really know about that... but I doubt it, at least not in -ncp mode.  I just wanted something to use for long games in ICC.

That's quite a diversion from your original question. :-)

to tell the truth I didn't realize Chess.com analysis board could do all that editing stuff... good to know.  I only use it to play through variations during games and that's all I want on ICC.

At this point I'm just curious what you mean by "offline" (because you want to use it while playing games on ICC). Or maybe I don't know what you mean by using it for long games on ICC -- I thought if you're playing a game on ICC you would have to be online.

sure ICC is online but for long games it's nice to have a "scratch pad" to figure things out on while playing online ... some people use a real chessboard for this but it'd be easier to have an electronic one in another window.  when I said "offline" I meant running locally vs. over the internet. 

I guess I just added my own bias when I read it the first time. I imagined that you wanted an offline program because you wouldn't be connected to the internet. But now I think that you're looking for that because it could be faster to run it locally. It may be true that xboard is faster for you than the chess.com analysis board, but the reason isn't because it runs locally. After the initial page load, the chess.com analysis board is also running locally.

I tried it again with a superfast connection and it was snappy as desired.    I don't know why it didn't seem so before. whatever....    The big thing (for me) is discovering ICC kicks the crap out of Live Chess with or without analysis board.  Of course other people's "mileage may vary" ...     ICC doesn't seem to have nice chatty places like this for instance! 

Thx, I was looking for something like this few times, but couldnt find.

This is good stuff.

Thanks!