Chess Programs for Linux Ubuntu

I just switched  to Linux Ubuntu and I was hoping I could have some recomendations for a good chess program to play against and store my games in that runs on linux.

bump

Aquarium is optimised for Wine

i use ubuntu

SCID, SCID vs PC, chessx are fine & free native applications. There are also strong native engines, like Stockfish, Critter and Komodo (the latter is commercial).

Many windows applications like Arena, Aquarium, Chessbase, run under an emulation layer (WINE), although there are some minor, or major glitches (mainly usability ones).

Welcome to Linux!

This site looks dormant since, ummm, some 3 years ago.

Is there many players here using Ubuntu or any other linux distos?

I am done with windows, linux offers a great alternative without viruses, and license fees. 

Scid vs. PC is great.

Here. I use Linux exclusively since 2004.

Not Ubuntu though, not my cup of tea. I like freedom of choice and flexibility, and Ubuntu is the "I am stupid, please guide me" type of distro.

what do you use

I find that Shredder and Stockfish work pretty well under Linux.

About the distro debate ... it will never end as long as there are more than one distro available. It is not wise to categorize them like "distro for the stupid" or "distro for the genius" or even "distro for zombies". You have the pen, you can write your own page.

What I like of Ubuntu is all the support behind it. I mean Canonical is doing a great job to put Linux in the forefront of the market. Ubuntu Touch for tablet is coming soon. Their cloud service UbuntuOne is very useful too. That said it's a great community and I can't wait for the new LTS Ubuntu 14.04.

Xubuntu and Kubuntu are nice forks as well, whitin the Ubuntu family and enjoying full support of the community.

I've tried linux Mint and Fedora as well, very decent distros but I keep coming back to Ubuntu or Xubuntu.

Granted that any Linux distribution can be tuned to your needs, and all of them can be tuned to look almost identical.

However, not all of them are the same. Why do I have to install a Canonical distro and then lose precious time to remove all that quasi-proprietary rubbish they have injected to make the OS resemble windows in the worst possible way?

I am managing more than a dozen computers. In the production ones I invariably use Debian stable, and in the desktop ones either ArchLinux, or Manjaro (a rather recent, more conservative and more user friendly Arch derivative). Arch may have a few quirks, but also a huge plus: system management is extremely easy if you are familiar with BASH, and building programs from source is by far the easiest and less painless than any other distro I have tried... and I tried pretty much everything.

It's good as a first distro because it's harder to break things.

Some people may not like the 'commercialization'' of Ubuntu but I see it as a good thing. That's how Linux will reach more people. Today only the initiated know about Linux, while Microsoft and Apple vastly dominate the PC world. Canonical is attempting to put Ubuntu, as an open source OS, in the forefront of the market not only on PC but on tablet and smartphone as well.

But to play with the big corporation you need to have the ressources.

Linux is about freedom, but one needs to know that liberty is even possible.

Debian Linux is more difficult to install for a desktop than Ubuntu or Mint, but Debian Linux is the hard work from volunteers related to a non profit setup.

Indeed! I simply never succeeded installing Deban, let alone find the iso on their website. Not so convenient for the average Joe.

I found a German linux distro that is actually based on Debian, such as Wheezy and Squeeze, it is called SnowLinux. www.snowlinux.de

It's much more easier to fetch the iso and install.

Commercialization plays havoc with security. I'm using old releases of Ubuntu to avoid the horror it has become recently with all this 3rd-party stuff. Likely I'll be moving to Debian soon, when I have the time.

I recently switched from Wwindows to Ubuntu and I am quite happy. It seems that Chessbase works under Wine, so that will probably be my first choise. I haven't evaluated all functions yet; I don't know if the videos work properly but if I can play through games i am happy.

Scid + Stockfish seems OK but the GUI is a bit dated.

Use SCIDvsPC instead of SCID.  Also, check out Scidb, a new gui that supports, pgn, scid, and chessbase database formats, and is quite attractive.

If you want to upgrade the way your scid/scidvspc gui looks, you can download some of my pieces here:

http://gorgonian.weebly.com/scid-vs-pc.html

And see Ed Collins' website for a lot of textures.  Or you can go to the babaschess section of my website and download the texture packs there and convert them to scid format.

switching from Windows but still using Windows Emulation