Linux

Confucius says: "A person who prefers Linux on their home computer is like a person who prefers to be under the hood of their car instead of driving it." This is probably why /g/earheads prefer Linux, but we're abo/v/e that. Linux has been a favorite of neckbeards everywhere since the 90s, but now it's really been catching on: when people do a 360° and moonwalk away after seeing the unholy abomination of Windows 8, or their jaws drop in shock when they see how Windows 10 went full 1984 on the users' privacy, yet realize they can't afford an iComputer, they look at Linux and say, well, why the fuck not.

But you may ask: "What about the vidya?" True, Linux has fewer games than Windows. Other than a short porting fad back in the 90s, it just didn't seem commercially viable. But things are changing: all major engines are now designed with multiplatform in mind (thanks in large part to the growth of mobile platforms), so ports have become easy and cheap to do. Digital distribution also helps reduce costs, and even Valve pushes hard for Linux gaming because they got afraid of Windows' app store.

Although the amount of commercial games is still modest, there's a bunch of online stores that offer them:

• Desura
• GOG
• Humble Store
• IndieGameStand
• Steam
• PenguSpy not an appstore, but not a review site either

Other than native games, there is Wine, a compatibility layer to run Windows applications (it's recommended to use the PlayOnLinux frontend).

Also known to the free software support crowd as "GNU/Linux". And be sure to pronounce it correctly.

Free games from repositories

To download and install programs on Linux, one typically does not download .exe files from various websites and run them by hand; instead, distros provide a software repository or package manager.[1] If something is not in your distro's manager, you can still port the package over but you might need to puzzle out some missing dependencies. For those of us who love to tinker on the engine more than driving the car, you can get the source code for each of these and compile it by hand.

Picture	Title	Genre	Description
	Battle for Wesnoth	Turn-based Strategy	Fantasy strategy game where much of the game's units, music, artwork, and campaigns are player contributed. The game plays on a hex based system, with terrain affecting the accuracy of attacks and unit movement. Six well-balanced factions are available for play at the start. It makes you really feel like you're commanding an army by having you level troops into hardened veterans, which you can recall for future battles. Dozens of custom units are available for single player and multiplayer by downloading player mods known as "eras". Fantastic quality considering it's freeware. Download stable version if you just want to play the game without too many bugs.
	Beneath a Steel Sky	Adventure/Point 'N Click	Classic adventure style game that follows Robert Foster on a journey through a cyberpunk-esque metropolis. Requires ScummVM to be played, but that is also a free install from your local package repository. Fun fact: the background art is drawn by Dave Gibbons of Watchmen fame.
	Freeciv	Empire Building	The awesome that is Sid Meier's Civilization, now with multiplayer that isn't hot-seat, custom tilesets, and you can tinker the hell out of the rules. It's been upgraded since to play more like Civ2. If you preferred the sort-of sequel "Colonization," check out FreeCol.
	Frogatto	Adventure/Platformer	Old school adventure platformer with RPG elements like quests and buying powerups.
	Frozen Bubble	Puzzle	It's Bust-A-Move, that game that's like Breakout plus Bejeweled where you break the walls by adding more bricks. Every Linux magazine from here to India puts this in their top ten list. Casual gamers can't get enough of this on Linux or any other platform.
	Micropolis	Simulator	A free port of the original SimCity.
	Nethack	Roguelike	Imagine Dungeons and Dragons in a very difficult, video game form. Death is permanent, the dungeon is always randomly generated, and you aren't going to win for a very long time. A spinoff of "Rogue," so it's a Rogue-like game, but everyone had a go at the source code to add everything including kitchen sinks. You can check out the game's wiki Here. Default interface is ASCII graphics in a term window, but you can download extra packages for a tileset or even isomorphic interface instead.
	Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup	Roguelike	This game is a modern take on the roguelike genre that doesn't stray too far from its roots. It keeps the randomly generated environments, turn-based gameplay and punishing difficulty of classic roguelikes. But reduces the amount of keystrokes to learn, replaces the ASCII with more descriptive tiles and improves the interface to the point it is playable by using a mouse. It also focuses on reducing the amount of spoilers required to finish the game without sacrificing its inherent complexity. Definitely one of the best modern roguelikes (others are ADOM and TOME4) around and probably the easiest one to get into that doesn't dumb things down too much (Dungeons of Dredmor) or is barely a roguelike (FTL, Spelunky, Binding of Isaac). You can get it here.
	Oolite	Space Combat, Trading	The classic 8-bit galaxy-on-a-single-floppy space game Elite lives on. Better graphics (duh), a mod community and a wiki proves that Elite ain't dead.
	Simon Tatham's Puzzle Collection	Puzzle, Casual	Futoshiki, Lightup, Loopy, Nonograms, Sudoku, Untangle... all those Japanese puzzles that people install on their Blackberries and iPhones and buy cheap books of at Barnes and Noble, Simon Tatham already ported them to Linux and you can make each one as hard or as easy as you want. Also available on Android (which is Linux under the hood, so no surprise.)
	Spring RTS Engine	Realtime Strategy	It's Total Annihilation re-implemented to use OpenGL and more computing power. When the kids in high school were pissing themselves over the strategy of StarCraft, the TRUE neckbeards-in-training were playing Total Annihilation. The game mods have taken on a life of their own, so you can use Spring Engine for real-time strategy games with rules (not just re-skinned units!) for WWII, Gundam, Star Wars, sci-fi, necromancers, or even a Tron game if Darwinia isn't crunchy enough for you.
	SuperTuxKart	Racing	A cool mascot racer in the vein of Mario Kart. But here, all the characters are mascots of various free software projects, such as BSD's Beastie, GIMP's Wilber, and KDE's Konqi.
	Torus Trooper	SHMUP	Another shooter from Kenta Cho. Remember Tempest? This is Tempest on steroids. You're racing down this tube, sometimes at over 4000km/h blowing shit up. The graphics and music help to put you in the mood too, kind of has the same feel as Rez. It's not a game with a whole lot of depth, but it's fun to play every now and then.
	The Ur-Quan Masters	RPG	Star Control 2. Adventure across the stars, recruiting other aliens that got the shit kicked out of them since the previous game, or fend off the aliens that decided to kiss ass to the new murderous-squid overlords. Between exploring distant stars and doing mineral scans (Hmmmm...) you get into ship-to-ship action combat against different vessels with a rock-paper-scissors balance of abilities.

Free games in distro-agnostic packages

These are still typically free software (or at least freeware), but do not use your easy-peasy package manager to install itself deep in your system. Most of the time, they are just binaries (or executables in Windows parlance) in downloadable tar.gz archives (which work like .zip files). Though, in some more rare cases, these may also include games that come as source code only -- you need to hunt down the right libraries through your distro's package manager, compile, and install manually (while trickier, this has the added bonus of increased optimization for your computer hardware, however marginal).

Picture	Title	Genre	Description	Link
	Abuse	Platformer	You got locked up in a prison where illegal genetic experiments take place, and all the inmates were transformed into monsters. A 2D platformer with a rather unique mouse-driven aim system, a gritty style, and merciless action. Was made free when the developer went bankrupt. Worth checking out.	Desura
	Heroes of Newerth	Action-RTS	It's DotA by S2 Games. Need I say more? Just run the shell script in terminal to install and you're good to go. Went F2P model because of competition from LoL. Some heroes are original, while others are ported from DotA. This'll hold you over until Gaben decides to port every Valve game (DotA2) to Linux.	Official site
	Katawa Shoujo	Visual Novel	The story tells of a young man who, after suffering a heart attack upon hearing a confession from the girl he loves, is diagnosed with cardiac dysrhythmia and sent to a school where he meets several lovely and charming teenage girls who each suffer from a different disability.	Official site
	Marathon trilogy	FPS	The predecessor to the Halo series. The year is 2794 and you are a security officer aboard the UESC Marathon, a large, multi-generational colony spacecraft (converted from one of Mars's moons). As the ship and the Tau Ceti colony are attacked by hostile extraterrestrials, you find that something is amiss with the ship's artificial intelligences - one of which having gone quite insane after figuring out a secret greater than universe itself.	Sourceforge SDL port
	Revenge of the Cats: Ethernet	Team FPS	Tug-of-war style territory fight with an unusual travel/heal/respawn mechanic.	Official site
	Typhoon 2001	Tube shooter	Fan remake of Tempest 2000, one of the trippiest shooters ever.	Mirror
	World of Padman	Arena FPS	Wacky colorful cartoons and cleavage. Spray your color and run around on bookshelves.	Official site
	Xonotic	Arena FPS	This is very much like Quake (its engine actually is a massively improved version of the original Quake engine), but with even more jumping around; you'll see what I mean once you play it. Includes game modes like Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, "Keyhunt" and more, both in Singleplayer and Multiplayer. Has about 10-30 people playing for any region at their respective daily "peak times", but hopefully there will be more once version 1.0 is released.	Official site

Commercial games

Picture	Title	Genre	Year Released	Description	Where to acquire
	Alpha Centauri	Empire Building	1999	FreeCiv IN SPAAAAAACE. There's some story that gets revealed, and landmarks you can make use of even on a randomly generated world. More diplomacy and culture-changing options too.
	Amnesia: The Dark Descent	Horror & Survival	2010	You play as Daniel, an amnesiac who must investigate the mysterious Castle Brennenburg, with only two goals in mind: Find your memories, and kill the castle's owner, the mysterious Alexander of Brennenburg. VERY loosely based on Lovecraft's "The Outsider" (So loosely based that you will only understand the similarities after you beat the game). TL:DR; Decently hard puzzles. Loads of NOPENOPENOPE
	Aquaria	Action-adventure	2007	Massive award-winning indie title created by Spelunky programmer Derek Yu and Crayon Physics Deluxe composer Alec Holowka. Aquaria features huge underwater environments with an emphasis on exploration, challenging-but-not-stupid boss battles and an absolutely phenomenal soundtrack. Before you ask: yes, there is a nude mod. An absolute must-have for any Metroidvania fan.
	Broforce	Platformer	2015	Testosterone: the video game! They got all the great heroes from the manliest action movies ever, and put them together in a crazy tough 2D platformer where pretty much everything is explodable.	Humble Steam
	Cave Story+	Action-adventure	2011	A robot boy awakens in a dark cave and soon comes across a village of rabbit-like creatures being attacked by a mad scientist. A vast and rather challenging game, originally free but this paid version has upgraded graphics and improved gameplay.	Steam
	Cities: Skylines	Simulation	2015	Love Sim City? Looking for something that was not ruined by developer incompetence and publisher greed? Say no more.	Steam
	Cook, Serve, Delicious!	Restaurant Simulator	2013	What do you get when you take Warioware and Diner Dash, throw them into a blender, and set it on puree? A mess, for starters, but you'd also get something similar to Cook, Serve, Delicious! You start out with a basic 1-star restaurant, and gain notoriety through new recopies, challenges, and so on. Memorizing the correct order to make food is key, and you will likely curse at your computer when you mess up the layers of a lasagna. Free updates have brought weekly challenges and competitions as well, so if you prefer just making food over owning a restaurant, you can do that too.	Steam
	Costume Quest	Adventure / RPG	2011	Note: Best played around Halloween. You play as a kid trying to rescue your sibling kidnapped by troll-like monsters. However, this game has a nostalgic childhood-like feel to it. The dialogue, the attitudes, along with the general humor and plot can really take you back. In dealing with obstacles, you find, build, and use costumes and their abilities to proceed, such as a light-up toy sword to scare away darkness phantoms. The battles are a little simple, but play well enough and are rather cute and silly, being hilariously exaggerated through imagination. The game is a little short, but the DLC expansion chapter (which is included with the PC version) rounds it out nicely.	Steam
	Crusader Kings II	Grand Strategy	2012	Crusader Kings II lets you play as a historic European Dynasty and lead them from the Norman conquest of England in 1066 to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Through war, strategic marriages, incest, intrigue, and crusades you will expand your demesne and secure your Dynasty's future in the tumultuous Medieval Era. CK II has many pieces of DLC but the 4 major expansions are Sword of Islam (Allows playable Muslims), Legacy of Rome (Makes the Byzantium Empire much more unique to play as), The Republic (playable Merchant Republics and new trade mechanics) and The Old Gods (Adds a new 867 start date, playable pagans, and numerous game play mechanics like the ability to raid).	Steam
	Darwinia	RTS	2005	Get your RTS on with 8-bit troops in a 32-bit terrain. Very hacker atmosphere, terrific soundtrack, simple interface that focuses you on the fights and resources instead of min/maxing and spreadsheets. You'll be cheering every time your blocky little guys defeat a wireframe evil spider.
	DEFCON	RTS	2006	You remember the movie WarGames? With Matthew Broderick? It's EXACTLY like the game that he was supposed to be playing, only this time there's no namby-pamby AI that tells you it's a bad idea to throw nukes at the Commies.
	Drunken Robot Pornography	FPS	2014	Get your jetpack and laser blaster ready: you made the mistake of giving free will to your robot bartender and the son of a bitch built an army of giant robots to destroy the city! Unique indie mix of FPS and bullet hell, perhaps a bit "fluff" but still very fun. Quite unique in the FPS genre for having extremely vertical stages. Sadly, it in fact does not contain any pornography. From the creators of AaAaAA!!!.	Humble Steam
	Dust: An Elysian Tail	Platformer / Action-RPG	2013	A mysterious warrior wanders a fantasy land with a magical talking sword and a little flying sprite companion, trying to regain his own memories. A beautiful furry-themed indie 2D platformer with RPG and beat 'em up elements. Stunning painted backgrounds, top notch animation, great voice acting. Hard to believe one guy did most of the game all by himself.	GOG Humble Steam
	Dustforce	Platformer	2012	Very challenging and lesser-known platformer that draws obvious Super Meat Boy parallels with its wall-sliding action, online replay feature, and focus on speedrunning. This time there's dust on every surface, dust on rabid wild animals, and you've got to clean that shit up. Doing so while getting the highest rank in each level is crazy hard and technical. Don't miss out on the amazing sprite art or music, either.	Steam
	Empire: Total War	Strategy	2009	Empire Total War is a mixture of Real Time Strategy and Turn Based Strategy. In campaign mode, you play as one of 13 or so major nations starting at the year 1700. From there you manage economy, build improvements, be diplomatic, and attack people. When you attack, it switches to a RTS, with the troops you have at your disposal. Unfortunately, it's plagued with a shit load of bugs, even after The Creative Assembly released THREE goddamn patches. Interesting game, but don't start here, go for Medieval, or Rome first. Tip: Don't buy it as a single game but rather in the bundle with napoleon total war for the same price.	Steam
	Football Manager 2016	Sports/Simulation	2015	Do you suffer from severe autism? Then this game is for you! Create your own manager and manage football clubs from all around the world. It's a good game with very deep and complex gameplay, but it's the best football simulator. It also has a big community of modders; just don't expect good graphics!	Steam
	Freedom Planet	Platformer	2014	Glorious indie old-school 2D mascot platformer, with the sort of level design, physics, graphics and music you'd expect from the very best Mega Drive games.	GOG Humble Steam
	Half-Life Complete	FPS	2008	An experiment goes terribly wrong, and everyone's favorite crowbar-wielding MIT Ph.D. has to deal with a ton of aliens invading and the black ops trying to cover up the whole mess. Come on, it's the goddamn Half-Life series, you can't not play this!	Steam
	Killing Floor	FPS / Survival Horror	2009	Co-op zombie killing. Originally a free Unreal Tournament 2004 mod, until someone put a price tag on it. It's a nice alternative to Left 4 Dead. It has more zombie types, and only a few of them are the runner kind. Has classes which get various bonuses and can be leveled up in various ways. It also has hilarious British accents, and the game would be worth buying just for that. LOADS A MONAY!	Steam
	King's Bounty: Armored Princess	RPG / Strategy	2010	The sequel to King's Bounty: The Legend. Overwhelmingly similar to its predecessor, Armored Princess continues the cheeky yet fun story of KB and improves a few mechanics. Both of these games are great and definately worth purchasing - both are fun and will challenge you to overcome strategic shortcomings in your army builds.	Steam
	Knock-knock!	Surreal Horror	2013	The latest game from Russian Studio Ice Pick Lodge, and unfortunately also the most poorly reviewed. This is the most accessible release in their library, but this does not detract from their trademark commitment to crafting avant-garde atmospheres with varying degrees of realism and a uniquely Russian sensibility.	Steam
	Left 4 Dead 2	FPS	2009	Despite being released just a year after the original, this is a damn fine game to sit down and play with your friends either online, or couch-session. Great graphics, nice additions to the gun list, and new zombies. If you played on Advanced on the first game, expect to get kicked back down to Normal. This game is harder than the first. Feels incomplete, due to the fucking retarded Survivor AI and bugs. Is a glorified expansion, with less fun.	Steam
	La-Mulana	Metroidvania	2013	Freeware classic gone from MSX-style to remade for modern PC, and remastered to the max. Features better controls, better laptop, more settings, MUCH smoother animations and action, a rearranged soundtrack, and even some new story additions. Some puzzles, traps, and bosses have been modified, sometimes to be easier or harder. Bosses are generally more challenging though. If you never played the original, that's fine. There's enough differences to warrant giving both a go. For those not in the know, it's a mostly non-linear platforming adventure game. Dungeons are full of danger and riddles and require some non-lateral thinking and possibly note-taking to figure out.	Playism Steam
	LISA	RPG	2014	A side-scrolling RPG where you play as a middle-aged martial artist called Brad on his quest to rescue his kidnapped adopted daughter in a brutal post-apocalypse where women have become extinct. The story starts dark and quickly descends into a tale of human misery. Notable for having up to 30 characters that can be recruited into the party, plus containing horrible moral choices. Also has a DLC ending called LISA the Joyful which essentially concludes the story.	Steam
	Lux Delux	Strategy	2005	Risk done right. Over 700 maps, and you can make your own, SDK for hacking the ruleset (like having naval units, or canals, or remember playing nuclear Risk?). Comes with LAN and Internet play too.
	Mercenary Kings	2014	Action/RPG	While the Paul Robertson pixel art and the chiptune music may scream "Metal Slug successor" to you, this game is actually more like Monster Hunter Lite. You take on a variety of missions in the form of Mega Man-esque platformers, and collect materials and money to create better guns and stuff. Multiplayer is fun, too. Only caveat is that it is definitely as difficult as Monster Hunter. Prepare for a LOT of trial and error when it comes to gameplay.	Steam
	Neverwinter Nights	RPG	2003	Do you like third edition Dungeons and Dragons? Well, this game is basically that, but in computer form. Play as whoever you want, read nice big blocks of text, and enjoy slow, somewhat lengthy turn-based battles. Plenty of mods out there for those who want them and tons of persistent worlds (mini-MMORPG's, ranging from action PvP to deep DM-heavy roleplaying) still online.
	Papers, Please	Dystopian Document Thriller	2013	You are the immigrations inspector for Arstotzka, a Eurasian communist shithole. It is your job to inspect the papers of everyone trying to enter the country, turning away any and all who do not qualify. A lot more engrossing than it sounds. Seriously, play this.	Steam
	Portal Bundle	Puzzle	2007	Welcome to the Aperture Science Computer-Aided Enrichment Center. It is time to do science or die trying.	Steam
	Postal	Isometric shooter	1997	Now this is the story all about how some guy's life got flipped-turned upside down, so he cracks and goes out on a shooting rampage. Unlike the sequel, or the movie, this game does not play violence or potty humor for laughs. It is absolutely straightforward in its unabashed depravity. It is disgusting and frightening. And it's also a hidden gem of a mercilessly hardcore game.	GOG Steam
	Postal 2	FPS/Sandbox	2003	One of the most hilariously fucked up games ever. Survive a week in a crazy little hick town plagued by anti-gaming activists, cannibals, terrorists, bank robbers, radical environmentalists, ATF agents, and Gary Coleman! Will you refrain from using force, or will you leave a trail of mangled, charred corpses in your wake?	Humble Steam
	Rochard	Platformer / puzzle	2011	When an asteroid mining crew finds evidence of intelligent life out there, they're attacked by space bandits, and soon find themselves as targets of a nasty conspiracy. Excellent graphics and sound, some nice run-n-gun action, and a ton of crazy physics-manipulating puzzles.	Steam
	Shadow Warrior	FPS	2013	A bodyguard / henchman / hired killer is sent to acquire a very special sword, but when a horde of demons gets in the way and slaughters everyone before he has a chance to, he realizes there's something weird about his corporate overlords. Remember the 90s classic? Lo Wang was a sort of oriental Duke Nukem, but unlike the notorious DNF, this one is actually a good game... a fast-paced, damn fun, insanely over the top, ultra violent romp. From the same team of the also excellent Hard Reset.	GOG Humble Steam
	Skullgirls	Fighting	2013	I hope you brought a pillow to bite, because this game is about to push your shit in. Skullgirls is an indie fighting game that uses the lag-reducing GGPO-netcode, so now even Brazilians can laugh at you. It features an ever-growing roster of playable characters, a unique art-style and some of the most hardcore gameplay since Guilty Gear. If you ever get tired of having to wipe your pussy-ass tears after every match, there's always a Skullgirls General on /vg/.	Steam
	Spec Ops: The Line	TPS	2012	In a near future, Dubai was annihilated by a series of freak sand storms. Months later, a radio transmission indicates that there might be survivors there after all. You lead a Delta Force team sent to investigate, but when you get there, you find there's some real crazy shit going on.	Humble Steam
	The Stanley Parable	First-person Adventure	2013	A free (?) mod for HL2 about some guy named Stanley who works for a company, pressing buttons, until one day everything changes. Very stripped down gameplay (WASD, mouse, and E), but focuses on story. A self-aware deconstruction of video games, but can seem pretentious. Multiple endings, short playtime, but worth checking out for the story. There are two games called "The Stanley Parable", made by the same people: the free one at moddb is Half-Life -ish, the for-pay one at Steam is Portal 2 -ish. The free mod has 6 endings, while the paid version has 18. Play the free one first to see if you like it.	ModDB Steam
	The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings	Action-RPG	2012	The very brutal and rather titillating journey of a badass monster slayer in a gritty, morally ambiguous fantasy world. Think "Zelda meets Game of Thrones" and you'll kind of get it.	GOG
	Undertale	RPG	2015	If you've managed to avoid the annoying-as-hell fandom, this is absolutely worth checking out. A bullet hell-esque battle system that likes to switch things up during boss fights, an amazing soundtrack (fucking MEGALOVANIA, man), likable and well-written characters, and a narrative that, while nothing special on the story side of things, is incredibly well-executed... this just has a lot going for it.	GOG Humble Steam
	Unreal Tournament 2004	FPS	2004	Skip the first Unreal Tournament and get this one instead. Fast-paced arena FPS, based heavily on acrobatics and aim, recommended for its complexity and variety. Gametypes range from vehicle-based Onslaught mode to football-like Bombing Run. Unreal Tournament 2004 is commended for consistent developer support, and a once-massive mapping/modding community that produces quality content to this day. The single-player is boring but the AI is rather intelligent in all maps, especially deathmatch.
	Uplink	Strategy/Sim	2002	Hack computers. Don't get caught. Decent story, full of intrigue. Bring down corporations and destroy people's lives for money to upgrade your computer while searching for a mysterious virus. Don't let the appearance fool you, the later missions are hard and intense, and the game has quite a few secrets.
	Wasteland 2: Director's Cut	RPG	2014	From the producer of the original Fallout, this is what a modern Fallout would be if they made it for the old fans instead of casuals: a top-down, turn-based tactical RPG with a fuckton of possibilities and immense room for customization.	GOG Humble Steam
	World of Goo	Puzzle	2009	I shouldn't have to tell you what World of Goo is. Yes, they made a native Linux version. Is there a platform this game DOESN'T run on?	Steam