Although Steam has made many advances in the inclusion of current video games in Ubuntu and Gnu / Linux, the truth is that the classics always reign and in Ubuntu they are no exception. One of the games that was first included in Ubuntu was a chess game that was powered by Gnu Chess, a very powerful chess engine that allowed us to play a game of chess as if we were great chess champions.
The engine is free and totally free, it is also in the Ubuntu repositories so we can play with it or install it in a few clicks without having to pay anything for it and to be able to play a game of chess against our computer.
But before installing this motor, we first have to go to Dash and in Applications find the application Gnome Desktop Chess. This application is a graphical interface that will allow us not only to use any chess engine but also to play graphically and even be able to work with other chess engines.
There are other graphical interfaces that offer other options and that are also available in the Ubuntu repositories, but their configuration is a bit more complicated. Now, if you like the settings, the best option is x board.
Once we have installed the graphical interface we have to install the chess engine. To do it in this case we will open the terminal and write:
sudo apt-get install gnuchess gnuchess-book
If we really want to have more than one motor, in that case we recommend the Crafty option, an interesting and free engine too. To install Crafty, we open the terminal and type
sudo apt-get install crafty
Finally, there is the possibility of being able to play a game online, in this case we have to resort to Zippy, A program necessary to connect to the chess servers. The problem with this new functionality is that it is only valid in Xboard and not in Chess, so if we have installed the first option, we will not be able to play online with Zippy. Now we just have to sit down and move a piece Does anyone want to play a game of chess?