Chess Programs for Linux Ubuntu

Personally I use i3 for when I need to get 'sh*t' done. Xfcewhen I want to play a nice game or watch a movie and when I want to show someone that Linux is a viable option on the desktop with nice eyecandy but still more productive than win8 I show them gnome 3 or cinamon. So most of the time I use i3. I can't imagine being productive at writing code or reading and learning without a tiled window manager. Having said that, if you have less than 4 GB a 64bit install won't do you that much good. The great thing about linux is however, if you have a 64 bit install and system, you can still use 32 bit libs and compile those (or just download the bins) tools/programs you need. 32 and 64 bit software live together on my system. Then again, i have been using linux since 1998 and worked for SuSE. Later I switched to Debian, which I still find 'the distro', but since about 2 years I have switched to Arch since I love the rolling high-tech releases there. However, that is not something that I would recommend as a first distro.

There are so many great chess tool on linux. They have all been named, scid for example is a great tool. For a quick game of chess these days I use pychess. Great little program, and even greater since it's written in python and python is fun to code at :)

However, for the average user, you want a 64 bit system so you can adres more than 3 gb of memory.

Thanks all of you for your clarifications. I have switched to 64 bit on both my desktop (runs on core2duo - 4GB ram) and on my laptop (i3 -3gb ram). No problem in performance and I am happy to add more gigs if i need it. But the provision is now there, which is a good thing.

and may be it's a placebo effect, just may be, but i have a feeling that both the computers are snappier now. it could also be because of MATE. I have a sneaking suspicion that MATE is better than Cinnamon, again, could be placebo effect! I am not a techie but I am an advanced amateur in technology :P

Both MATE and Cinnamon are traditional gtk2 stuff- not much difference between them, performance-wise, if I had a choice I would go for MATE which is Gnome2 rising from the dead.

But still, if I had more choice I would pick none of them: KDE4 is a joy to use, LXQT is close to being completed, and power users almost always prefer a self-tuned Openbox desktop. Oh, and traditional window managers will soon be a thing from the past- the era of Wayland/Weston is approaching fast.

so many possibilities, so many options. all free from virus, and hopefully from money (though donation is welcomed and should be done to the benevolent souls out there) and infinitely more beautiful than paid OS. what a wonderful world of open source!

Good that you managed to install 64 bit OS on your motherboard.

don't mention that, i was an ignoramus :(

i realised if your motherboard supports 64 bit processors, like i3 and Core2Duo (like you suggested) it works on 64 op system too. that was a good lesson. now i am ambitious and may go for OpenSuse for my laptop!

What are the advantages of OpenSuse?

Old distro, very mature. Reliable system tools. Fast mirrors. Very good KDE implementation. No cutting edge packages in the main repos.

Disadvantages- the usual in big distros: No rolling model, so switching between versions is a tad problematic. RPM based, so building packages from source (whenever needed) is quite difficult (almost impossible for new users). A bit too polished for some people.

Would appreciate any linux expert´s  advice on using chessbase on mint. Explained in the video below, thanks in advance.

http://goo.gl/Ep22z4

Chessbase 12 has several serious usability issues under WINE.

You have to use Chessbase 10 (plus the latest Update 6, else there are a few very annoying bugs- also present under windows).

You will have issues with the fonts, but that is because WINE uses fake windows fonts which are of crap quality. This is rather easily solved by deleting the WINE fonts folder, and installing true windows fonts via a small script named winetricks.

Use the latest winetricks from svn, and do

$ winetricks allfonts

for installing true windoze fonts, as well as

$ winetricks allcodecs

for replaying multimedia content. You will also need wine-gecko being installed, since it succesfully replaces Internet Explorer.

Chessbase 10 will refuse to start, you must first install VC runtime libraries:

$ winetricks vcrun2005

CB10 works just fine under WINE, both the program and the engines run at native speed (you can also use 64-bit engines in the recent WINE versions if you have a 64-bit Linux installed). The only issue I have encountered is that occasionally mouse clicks are not interpreted properly- e.g. in order to load a game I may have to rightclick it first and pick something from the context menu to get the game highlighted.

What about making it yourself?

Just pull the sourcecode from the official download, or from git, enter the source folder, open a terminal and type

make profile-build ARCH="x86-32"

 If you have the basic devel tools installed, you will soon get a 32-bit binary. Or alternatively, get a precompiled binary from any repo- say that one:

http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat/4/idpl/26966685/dir/pclinuxos/com/stockfish-5.0.0-1pclos2014.i586.rpm.html

Extract the RPM with any tool, e.g. ark, get the file named "stockfish", make it executable (chmod +x stockfish) and put it in any convenient place. Usually pulling binaries from sources different than your distro is dangerous, but not here: stockfish is a portable application, with no real dependencies.

I found the 32 bit version in the Download section of their site.

It's easy!, I used synaptic for installs various chess games.

I liked a game for my son, I installed Mango Paola.

Grettings!

It depends a little on whether you want to use it for something very specific, but in general XBoard is the most versatile user interface for Chess-like games on Linux. It can practically do anything, from connecting to Chess servers to searching positions in PGN databases, playing against engines from beatable (fairymax) to inhumanely strong (stockfish), to analyzing and annotating your games with those and edit comments into them. From Chess to Xiangqi and Shogi.

Best is to install it from source code, as Debian seems to package the ugly X-windows version:

./configure --with-gtk

make

sudo make install

It is usually not a good idea to direct new users to the terminal. They are not used to the term or the black screen. It has the high potential of freaking them out. Better to use "the ugly X-windows version" at this stage, I think.

Besides the official Debian/ Ubuntu repos, there is also an unofficial one, which packages the app (latest devel version) with gtk:

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/apersaud:/xboard/

One just has to set the repo, and install the pgp key.

Do any of the Linux interfaces support bughouse/crazyhouse?

XBoard supports about anything under the Sun:

Chess, Chess960, Xiangqi, Shogi, Makruk, Suicide/Giveaway, Losers, Crazyhouse, 3Check, Twokings, Atomic, Cylinder, Shatranj, Courier, Capablanca/Gothic/CRC, Seirawan, Janus, Falcon, Spartan, Berolina, Knightmate, Superchess, Grand Chess, Great Shatranj, Mighty Lion, Elven Chess, Chu Shogi. And as if that is not enough engines can now define their own variants and configure XBoard to know the rules. E.g. with the fairymax engine it also does King of the Hill, Charge of the Light Brigade, Bifurcator Chess, Team-Mate Chess, Ouk and Ai-Wok. And many flavors of Chess with different Armies (all playable as variant 'fairy' with an engine option to select the setup for that).

Bughouse is a 4-player game, and can only be played through an Internet Chess Server to connect two XBoards (as XBoard is a two-player interface). XBoard has an extra board window to show the partner game, though.

Crazyhouse

Spartan Chess

Excellent, thanks @HGMuller.

Is it somehow possible to get chessbase videos running under Linux?