GNU Chess For Linux

GNU Chess is an open source and freely distributed command-line software implemented in C++ and designed from the ground up to act as a chess engine for graphical chess clients, such as GNOME Chess or XBoard. It can also be used by anyone who want to play the game of chess against a computer, via the Linux shell or on a terminal emulator application.

The project features a text mode interface, supports 3D chess boards, supports internationalization, supports Universal Chess Interface (UCI), and it can be used on multiple operating systems (see the supported OSes section below for details).

To install and use the GNU Chess program on your personal computer, you have two options. The first method is the easiest, as all you have to do is to open your favorite package manager application (e.g. Synaptic Package Manager or Ubuntu Software Center), search for the ‘gnuchess’ package and install it with a couple of mouse clicks.

However, if the latest version of GNU Chess is not available in the main software repositories of your GNU/Linux distribution, you must download it from Softpedia, save the source archive somewhere on your PC, unpack it with an archive manager utility, and open the Terminal app.

In the terminal emulator window, navigate to the location of the extracted archive files (e.g. cd /home/softpedia/gnuchess-6.2.0), run the ‘./configure && make’ command to configure/compile the program, and then run the ‘sudo make install’ command to install GNU Chess system wide.

As mentioned, GNU Chess is written entirely in the C++ programming language. It is a cross-platform software engineered to work with all Linux and UNIX-like operating systems, including Linux, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. It runs on 64-bit and 32-bit computers.