Well, welcome back to the site everyone, I am a new writer here, and I hope to help you all in your transition to a better (in my humble opinion) operating system.

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From browsing the site I found that we get a lot of comments here that say things like “I am not switching to Linux because then I can’t play my games!” and “Ubuntu sucks because I can’t play games!”. Well, here is the thing… you can. There are tonnes and tonnes of games out there for you to try and play. There are even sites and programs dedicated to getting your windows games up and running. These comments actually puzzle me somewhat, because if you do not want to change to Ubuntu (or some version of Linux) then, are you still using XP (or Windows 98) for the same reason?

One interesting thing to note about gaming on Windows machines (and most consoles as well) is that Wal-mart controls what you will and will not experience in the case of commercial games. Don’t believe me? Look here (it will open in a new window). It is 4 pages long, but the gist of it is that Wal-mart is a huge company who dictates to the gaming industry what it will and will not sell and since Wal-mart is a popular stop for many people who would purchase games, the gaming industry has to bend to Wal-mart’s policies or risk not being a popular game. This sometimes has the opposite effect (think the GTA series) but generally it does not.

Ok, enough of my ranting… Onto games on Linux. There is a great deal of nostalgia involved in the game developer crowd on Linux, which means that you will find many clones (games that are similar to other ones) like Tron, Snake, Worms (yes those violent little guys), Asteroids, Frets on Fire (Guitar hero anyone?), and the ever popular Solitaire (I think there are at least 2 versions of it in the Ubuntu maintained repositories). So, if you are nostalgic for the older games, this is perfect for you. There are also games like Sudoku, Mahjong and Chess (which Microsoft only just decided to add in to their OS), which are classics and have been around for a really long time. Additionally, if you do some digging, you will find that some games that you bought for Windows (Never Winter Nights for example) have built in support for installing on Linux.

There are also options for installing Windows games on your Linux machine, there is Wine. Make sure that you check out appdb.winehq.org to be sure that your particular game is supported (if it is at least Gold if you will generally have a good experience). If you do not understand the directions to get your game running (sometimes they are quite difficult), you could try using one of the front ends to Wine that are floating around. Two that I know of and have used are Cdega, which is a custom implementation of Wine.

If you cannot afford (or don’t want to pay for) Cdega.  An alternative is to use PlayOnLinux. It is a true front-end to Wine instead of a re-write. It runs on user submitted (created) scripts that are tested throughly and updated quite frequently. All you have to do is look through the list and find the game that you want to play (it is possible that it is not supported unfortunately), and double click it and it will prompt you on each step of the way and lead you through the installation. There is a very extensive list of games, so you should be able to find something that you want to play. It also has a built in messenger so that you can ask for help if you need it (I have not really needed to use it so I don’t know how quick responses to your questions would be…).

There are also lots of websites dedicated to games that work in Linux. Some of them cater to true Linux games (non-commercial for the most part) like linuxgames.com and happypenguin.org (or rather the Linux Game Tome if you will). These sites keep track of games and their updates so that you too can keep your games up to date, since it is possible that they don’t have an auto-updater built in to the program. There are also sites that specialize in commercial games that are available for purchase. A quick web search turns up Linux Game Publishing, and Loki (which is now closed ), among many many others.

There is also always the opportunity to run a virtual machine to run your windows programs (that will be the topic of my next post). So, next time someone says to you that they don’t want to switch to Linux because they won’t be able to play games, you might want to correct them.

Written by: SeanJA (Click link to view their site)