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 Phun
"A great 2D Sandbox Game with Fun Physics and many options to create things. You can invent anything you can think of: machines, towers, cars, abstract fantasy stuff, etc. Start from scratch or choose from a few previously made inventions.
Get inspired by all the Youtube videos and take a glimpse at the well made Tutorial Section of the Site (how to create cars, catapults etc)." (Review)
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 PyChess
"With this program, you can play against the GNU Chess engine or lots of other chess engines, such as the Crafty engine. You can also play Internet chess by connecting to the FICS servers.
It allows for saving games in the PGN, EPD and FEN chess file formats so that you can always return to continue with the games or analyze them. It also offers opening books and other useful features including undo moves, hint and spy modes, sound and animation effects." (Review)
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HOXChess
"A well designed open source Chinese Chess application with highly configurable user interface and multi engines for you to choose from. You can also easily connect to multi remote Xiangqi servers to play the game online." (Review)
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 Frozen Bubble
"Designed with colorful 3D rendered penguin animations and 15 stereo sound effects, Frozen Bubble comes with editable 100 levels for 1-player game, or hours and hours of 2-player game. You can also choose to have multi-player game over the local area network or Internet.
Play this game with the left or right key to aim your shot and up key to fire. Hone your skills in speed and accuracy before the bubbles get frozen!" (Review)
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 Numpty Physics
"An excellent open source and multi-platform physics game with 35 built-in levels. It has more to offer than the free prototype of Crayon Physics Deluxe.
You're able to draw custom shapes and have access to all levels at once, so you don't have to worry if you get stuck at a level. The sketches look more like what a 3-year old has drawn and don't have the professional feel of Crayon Physics. But who cares? I'm also not an artist!" (Review)
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Picpuz
"Create and solve puzzles, save and open puzzle files, set tile sizes, solving a puzzle by swapping pieces or with a helpful solver." (Review)
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PipeWalker
Solve this casual puzzle in building a piping or network system by connecting all scattered pieces with your logic and skill. With support for four map sizes, themes and auto save, it has multiple levels for you to figure out. A binary package is available here for Ubuntu and compatible distros.
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Pingus
Play a free clone of the popular Lemmings game and guide as many penguins as possible to build bridges, climb, bash and use their talents to reach home before they fall into traps. Optional sound effects and music, plenty of level sets and even a level editor are available for challenging your skills.
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PANDA-glGo
"2D and 3D boards, adjustable board size and engine strength, play online or offline, etc." (Review)
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 HoDoKu
An open source program allows you to generate sudoku puzzles in five different and configurable difficulty levels. It also includes a solver and an analyzer to help you solve the puzzles.
While playing the game, you can select to view a summary of solving techniques and solution paths. When you click on a solution path, it highlights the steps on the corresponding grid to help you analyze the game. (Review)
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 Urban Terror
"Described as fun over realism by the creators, the game has fast paced, intense game-play. Urban Terror doesn't throw realism to the wind mind you, but rather tries to enhance game-play with elements like powerslides and wallhops.
Five different game types, over a thousand servers, plenty of players to go around and no waiting for people to show up." (Review)
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 LBreakout2
"An extremely polished Breakout Clone features a two-player mode (local or over the internet or LAN), fine animations and graphics, excellent controls, the ability to save a game, a level editor, and a turbo key.
This game gets regular Level Set updates. The fun continues well beyond when you have mastered the 50+ levels." (Review)
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KReversi
"7-level of difficulty, clean and helpful interface, show legal moves and last move, undo moves, hints, animation, etc." (Review)
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 BillardGL
"A brilliantly crafted open-sourced freeware game that affords play of either 8-Ball or 9-Ball. The 3D graphics are second-to-none and the physics appear to be flawless.
The user interface is simple and the controls straightforward. As you assess your next shot, you can view the table layout from any perspective you want, roaming and zooming and peering." (Review)
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10. Best Free Games for Linux
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SpeedCrunch is a fast, high precision and powerful desktop calculator:
http://speedcrunch.org/en_US/index.html
Slingshot is an app launcher created specifically for elementary, but is usable with other desktop environments as well:
https://launchpad.net/slingshot
Noise - audio player:
https://launchpad.net/noise
Plank is meant to be the simplest dock on the planet. The goal is to provide just what a dock needs and absolutely nothing more. It is, however, a library which can be extended to create other dock programs with more advanced features:
http://wiki.go-docky.com/index.php?title=Plank:Introduction
WingPanel - Stylish top panel that holds indicators and spawns an application launcher:
https://launchpad.net/wingpanel
Xfe is an MS-Explorer or Commander like file manager for X. It is based on the popular, but discontinued, X Win Commander:
http://roland65.free.fr/xfe/index.php?page=home
Files is a simple, powerful, sexy file manager for the Pantheon desktop:
https://launchpad.net/pantheon-files
Scratch is the text editor that works for you. It auto-saves your files, meaning they're always up-to-date. Plus it remembers your tabs so you never lose your spot, even in between sessions:
https://launchpad.net/scratch
Pantheon Terminal is a super lightweight, beautiful, and simple terminal. It's designed to be setup with sane defaults and little to no configuration. It's just a terminal, nothing more, nothing less:
https://launchpad.net/pantheon-terminal
Listen, a music management and playback for GNOME:
http://www.listen-project.org/
Readefine Desktop beautifies Google Reader articles, RSS, plain text and HTML for easy reading.
Features
* Beautiful multi-column, newspaper like layout for RSS and Google Reader.
* Dislike scrolling text? Readefine divides text into multiple pages for easy reading.
* Mark these as Read - The "Next Page" button in Magazine Layout marks the articles shown to you as read (in Google Reader), then gets more content.
* Looks great no matter what screen size.
* Use keyboard shortcuts like + and - to change font size. Shift + J to justify text.
* Instapaper, ,Twitter, ReadItLater Support.
* The desktop version contacts Google directly and only talks to Readefine servers for self-updating.
* Resizes pictures and videos to fit within the column.
* Re-flows text according to the available size.
* Makes long plain text files beautiful and also sections them for performance.
* Removes stray newlines, empty p, br tags.
* Supports drag and drop of text/rss/html.
* Copy paste or load a file from your computer (load, not upload)
http://readefine.anirudhsasikumar.net/
Since Steam has gone open beta on linux, is it unreasonable to add a few steam games and the steam client to the list of best freeware for linux? I know that not everything on Steam is free but a lot is.
Team Fortress 2 may quickly become one of the most played games on linux. I'm not a gamer though so I can't really give a definitive list.
ScreenCloud makes screenshot sharing easy:
http://screencloud.net/
Thanks Panzer. I did a quick try of this app on Linux Mint 14 Cinnamon Edition but it didn't correctly capture a window when "Capture window borders" was selected. The detection of the window area seemed to be out.
Has anyone experienced the same?
Yo Frankie! is an open video game made by the Blender Institute:
http://www.yofrankie.org/
Plee the Bear is a fun platform jump and run game, in which you're a bear, trying to catch his son, which ran away after he ate all your honey:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/plee-the-bear/
Ultimate Stunts:
http://www.ultimatestunts.nl/
TileRacer:
http://tileracer.model-view.com/tl/index.php/news.html
Maniadrive:
http://maniadrive.raydium.org/index.php/
Trigger Rally:
http://trigger-rally.sourceforge.net/
Naev is a 2D space trading and combat game:
http://code.google.com/p/naev/
Chromium B.S.U. is a fast paced, arcade-style, top-scrolling space shooter:
http://www.reptilelabour.com/software/chromium/
Danger from the Deep is an Open Source World War II German submarine simulator:
http://dangerdeep.sourceforge.net/
LinCity-NG is a city simulation game:
http://lincity-ng.berlios.de/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
Vega Strike is an Open Source 3D Action-Space-Sim that lets you trade, fight, and explore in a vast universe:
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/
LordsAWar! is a free, turn-based strategy game where up to 8 players strive for control of as many cities as possible:
http://www.nongnu.org/lordsawar/
Seven Kingdoms: Ancient Adversaries:
http://7kfans.com/
Spring: 1944:
http://spring1944.net/?page_id=137
Widelands:
http://wl.widelands.org/
Unknown Horizons is a 2D realtime strategy simulation with an emphasis on economy and city building:
http://www.unknown-horizons.org/
Syncbox, your own cloud storage that's totally free:
Features:
- Access your files anytime, anywhere
- Thorough protection of privacy
- Enjoy your multimedia files at home
- Simple sharing and collaboration
- Event Management and Version Control guarantee file safety and enhance file management
http://www.isyncbox.com/
Free heroes2 engine - Free implementation of Heroes of the Might and Magic II engine:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/fheroes2/
Hero of Allacrost is a single player 2D role-playing game inspired by classic console RPGs. In Hero of Allacrost, the player will explore rich environments, solve challenging dungeon puzzles, and fight strategic battles in an active-time based system:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/allacrost/
Auteria is a fantasy world within our real world. It is a free to play 3D multiplayer online game:
http://auteria.com/
Greedy Car Thieves:
http://gct-game.net/
IConquerU:
http://www.iconqueryou.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=...
Eternal Lands:
http://www.eternal-lands.com/
Go Ollie!:
http://www.happypenguin.org/show?Go%20Ollie
FreeCol:
http://www.freecol.org/
GNU FreeDink:
http://www.gnu.org/software/freedink/
Zero Ballistics is a unique blend of first person shooter and tank combat, focusing on multiplayer gaming exclusively:
http://www.zeroballistics.com/
Legends is a fast-paced first-person-perspective online multiplayer game:
http://www.legendsthegame.net/
TrueCombat is a tactical-teamplay oriented, modern-world combat simulation:
http://www.truecombatelite.com/index.php?page=truecombat
Features:
- Two teams, different mission objectives, emphasising realistic team tactics.
- Scriptable mission objectives in maps.
- The ability for different weapons to penetrate different objects with varying degrees of success.
- Realistic sounds for both enviroment and player.
- Attachment systems for weapon upgrades (scopes, silencers, laser sights, etc.).
- Realistic lens flares, glare, and flash blend effects.
- Freeclimb
- Voice commands for quick communication with teammates.
- Realistic weapon behavior simulation
- Iron sight aiming system, no crosshair
- Sophisticated ballistic simulation including multiple-layer object penetration
- Immersive and lethal, fast-paced action
World of Padman:
http://worldofpadman.net/website/news
Features:
- Colorful
- Unique characters
- Lots of (hidden) details
- Child-friendly
- Portable as well as multiuser capable
- Supports VoIP
- Offsite data download
- IPv6 ready
Vulture - An isometric graphical interface for the game NetHack:
http://www.darkarts.co.za/vulture
http://www.nethack.org/
Falcon's Eye is a mouse-driven interface for NetHack that enhances the visuals, audio and accessibility of the game, yet retains all the original gameplay and game features:
http://users.tkk.fi/jtpelto2/nethack.html
Speed Dreams is a 3d cross-platform, open source motorsport simulation and racing game:
http://www.speed-dreams.org/
Zero-K is an open-source RTS game. It aims to be dynamic, action-packed and hassle-free, full of clever strategies and constantly moving combat with games lasting an average 20-30 minutes:
http://zero-k.info/
Smokin' Guns:
http://www.smokin-guns.org/
http://www.smokin-guns.org/downloads
FreedroidRPG is an original isometric 3D role playing game taking place in the future, on Earth.
The game tells the story of a world destroyed by a conflict between robots and their human masters. Play as Tux in a quest to save the world from the murderous rebel bots who know no mercy. You get to choose which path you wish to follow, and freedom of choice is everywhere in the game:
http://www.freedroid.org/
Puzzle Moppet is a serenely peaceful yet devilishly challenging 3D puzzle game:
http://garnetgames.com/puzzlemoppet/
Heroes of Newerth is a multiplayer online battle arena video game:
http://www.heroesofnewerth.com/spotvid_splash.php
http://www.heroesofnewerth.com/download.php
Type light 3.2x font editor:
Freeware font editor, now available for Linux:
http://cr8software.net/typex.html
JDraw is a pixel oriented graphics editor. It is entirely written in Java, easy to use and saves (animated) GIFs, JPEGs, ICOs (favicons) and PNGs:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/jdraw/
PixelStruct is an open source tool for visualizing 3D scenes reconstructed from photographs:
http://da.vidr.cc/projects/pixelstruct/
SoftPerfect WiFi Guard is an essential tool for everyone running a small WiFi network and striving to keep it secure:
http://www.softperfect.com/products/wifiguard/