Chess Programs for Linux
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scid is ugly, reliable, and very usable.
chessx is a fine program, although the latest stable version is quite outdated. Better build the latest subversion revision, which has many very useful additions.
There was also a commercial version of Shredder Chess, written in pure java. I never liked it much.
Chessbase does work under wine, but it has quite a few glitches. Arena is working almost perfectly. And yes, most windows UCI engines run almost perfectly, I cannot see any performance handicap compared to running them under windows. Of course Critter, Stockfish and Komodo also have native Linux 32 and 64-bit editions of their UCI engines.
As far as engines go, Stockfish, Crafty, and gnuchess work natively on Linux. There may be others, but I quite like Stockfish, so I stick with it.
More troublesome are interfaces; there are a few choices, but none of them have the kind of depth and complete featureset that Fritz or Chessbase offer.
* Scid vs PC: my current tool of choice, it works with all the engines I noted above (both ICU and xboard engines), and has many nice features. It's written in Tcl/tk however, so the interface has a oldish feel to it and sometimes the pieces move a little sluggishly on the board. No official or PPA packages for Ubuntu as far as I know.
* Scid: the ancestor of Scid vs PC. Development seems to have slowed down on this project. An important difference between scid vs pc and scid is that scid has a docked interfaces; instead of using different windows for the different views (analysis, move lists, opening book, etc.) they are all nicely integrated in one window.
* ChessX: a very nice looking project, it's written in Qt, the interface is nice and crisp and it integrates with ICU and xboard engines. Not as featureful as Scid vs PC, but I'm keeping my eye on this one for sure.
* eboard: I'd say away from this one; it looks nicer than xboard, but it doesn't seem to have nearly as many features.
* xboard: I'd love for them to complete the GTK port, because it's a nice piece of software, but god is the GUI a total piece of crap.
* pychess: cute program, but it's also lacking in features. Also, the look of the pieces cannot be changed, which is quite annoying.
* Shredder: if you're willing to pay for software, Shredder is available for Linux. The interface is in Java, so that may turn you off, and the interface in general was very sluggish when I tried it. Doesn't seem nearly as polished as the Windows version.
My recommendation would be to try Scid vs PC or ChessX with Stockfish.
Note: just looked at the Mercurial version of PyChess, and they've added themes for the pieces, so that's nice. Hopefully they gain database features, annotation + variation features and maybe it would be worth looking at again.
A very interesting and helpful discussion, I thank you.
I would like to use Houdini 1.5, what program is recommended for linux so I can use this engine? I would like to analyze a bunch of positions.
idoun wrote:
I would like to use Houdini 1.5, what program is recommended for linux so I can use this engine? I would like to analyze a bunch of positions.
Why should you use Houdini? Critter and Stockfish should do your job just great.
Still, you can use Arena 3 and Houdini 1.5 if you wish, both work perfectly under WINE.
Terrific, thanks for the input, I am going to look into these options.
Anyone still looking for a Linux Chess GUI can try my new one, it is called StingRay, looks fairly nice, is native on Linux and supports UCI and XBoard engines. Runs best on Ubuntu, Debian or the Raspberry Pi.
http://www.stingraychess.org/Screenshots
Arena is OK, it is very simple, works fine. does not use too much resources
scid is ok too, but drawback is when dealing with pgn files, you must convert them to the scid format and than back to pgn, generally nice program, also some very basic options (like delete games ) are hard to find in beginning
fritz? maybe through wine... but do not cry for this comercial program, above two have all you need
Se han actualizado tanto scid version 4.7 https://sourceforge.net/projects/scid/
como ChessX version 1.4.11.0 http://chessx.sourceforge.net/
Junto con Arena y stockfish es todo lo que se precisa,incluso usando el antiguo y descatalogado scidb-beta http://scidb.sourceforge.net/ se pueden abrir las bases de chessbase y algunas convertirlas mediante el mismo programa o bien usando cbh2si4 (mediante la terminal bash) un script que provee scidb
I note on the Houdini homepage that their chess program will work within the Wine Windows emulator. Does anyone know of any comparable chess programs built with native support for Linux, rather than just working through Wine?
There a plenty of open source chess programs, but to date I have not found anything quite as powerful as Fritz or Houdini. Links and opinions welcome.