Linux Games Ubuntu Downloads Open Source Free

The Doomsday Engine is an enhanced Doom source port, based on the source code of id Software's Doom and Raven Software's Heretic and Hexen. The purpose of the project is to create versions of Doom, Heretic and Hexen that feel the same as the original games but are implemented using modern techniques such as 3D graphics and client/server networking. A lot of emphasis is placed on good-looking graphics.

License: free

Additional System Requirements: FreeDoom or a commercial or shareware
Doom/Heretic/Hexen wadfile.
A graphics card with hardware accelerated OpenGL support.
SDL, SDL-mixer, and SDL-net (svga-lib for console).
Soundpacks from Sycraft.org (for background music) if your system does not support MIDI.
Also see the links and futhermore take a look at jDUI (UI enhancement)

Dopewars is a game simulating the life of a drug dealer in 1984 New York, based upon the MS-DOS game of the same name, in turn derived from "Drug Wars" by John E. Dell. The aim of the game is to make lots and lots of money, but unfortunately you start the game with a hefty debt to the loan shark (who charges equally hefty interest) and the cops take a rather dim view of drug dealing. Dopewars expands upon the MS-DOS version by introducing multiplayer functions. With the aid of dopewars servers, several players (computer or human) can roam New York (or some other city, chosen by the operator of the server) and attempt to shoot other players and steal their lucrative drugs.

License: free

DOSBox is an emulator of a PC with dos. The main focus of DOSBox is emulating old dos games using the local file system for files.

(Screenshot shown is Alone in the Dark II running in DOSbox in Linux)

License: free

Additional System Requirements:

• SDL

If you were a computer user in the 80s and early 90s, chances are good that you used DOS or MS-DOS quite extensively. My first computer was a 286 hand me down, that at the time, was already outdated. It was a great starter rig anyway, as it gave me lots of DOS practice. I definitely learned the hard way. Imagine accidentally formatting the hard drive instead of the floppy disk. Yes, I admit it. In my defense, I was only eight years old.

Personal experiences aside, DOS was a clunky platform to code for, but the games were plenty. I personally grew up playing a lot of games from Apogee (now 3D Realms) such as Commander Keen, Bio Menace and of course, Duke Nukem. Despite the fact that these were still relatively early days of gaming, there was a huge selection to choose from.

DOSBox is a popular DOS emulator for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. It perfectly mimics a DOS environment, allowing you to use a computer as you would "back in the day". That said, you are not limited to just playing games, but loading up old applications for nostalgias sake as well.

Once opened, you will have a general DOS environment with a few simple commands in the root directory, such as config.com, autoexec.bat, command.com and others. In order to access other parts of your computer, you need to mount them: mount c /home/rwilliams/dosgames/. That will allow you to access that directory as your C: drive. You can then navigate and install your games just as you would in DOS.

Many DOS games have configuration tools you can use. Selecting Sound Blaster or something similar in any of them should give you perfect sound.

If you know how to use DOS, you will be good to go. You can go to a full screen view with CTRL + Enter and play games as they are meant to be played.

I love DOSBox. It works extremely well and has been problem-free. It's a great program to use in order to relive the old days and play games that you haven't touched in years. If you, like me, enjoyed Apogee games, you can still download the shareware versions here. Why they can't see it in their hearts to offer full versions of 15 year old games for free, I have no idea.

Dosbox frontend written in PyKDE

Dosbox-pykde is a frontend for dosbox for the KDE desktop. It is similar to other frontends for dosbox. The major difference with this one, is that it is centered around file management. This frontend is designed to separate the freshly installed files from the changed file, configuration files, and saved games. Every game entry in the frontend is split between two different archives. The first archive is a zipfile created upon entry to the frontend. This is meant to save a fresh install. The secondary, or extras archive, is a tarball whose contents are generated from an rdiff-backup of the leftover or changed files relative to the install archive.

License: free

Additional System Requirements:

• dosbox 0.65
• python 2.4 or greater
• PyKDE
• rdiff-backup
• rsync

Double Dash is a split-screen multiplayer remake of the classic game Boulder Dash (aka. Emerald Mine or Rocks'n'Diamond). You have to avoid falling boulders, collect diamonds and exit the cave before your opponents.

License: free

Additional System Requirements: SDL