Arena runs fine in Wine. A very strong program that has its own GUI is Slow Chess Blitz which also runs well under Wine.
Plz recommend good Linux chess software
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Try pychess. The interface is nice and you can use just about any chess engine available for Linux in the backend.
I'd rather avoid Wine, I'm not convinced .exe translates well. It seems strange that chess GUI's and clients aren't more abundant and better maintained on the Linix/Unix platform, even Android has tons of good programs.
I'll give Pychess a go.
Xboard, lacking? if it's esthetics you mean, evreything is completly configurable as it supports svg pieces and whatever textures you wish. As to functionalty you would be hard pressed to find a gui with all the features of xboard. I don't think even I know evreything xboard does. What exactly do you wan't to do?
Hi all. I have finished developing a Linux chess Gui. It works for Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian etc and Raspberry Pi. It is free to use and has most the basic features. It works with UCI and Xboard, and looks best - in my opinion - on Ubuntu 14.
Download it at www.stingraychess.org
Any problems getting it running, please email me on the contact page and I will try to help.
Regards, Sean.,
I have just installed PYCHESS (on Linux Mint). The Anderssen version is in the software centre, but has some problems with the GUI (graphical user interface). I installed the newer Morphy version from here http://www.pychess.org/news/ (by downloading and executing the .deb file) and it works very well.
I moved to Linux 2mths ago and the only thing I miss is my chess programmes: Babaschess & Tarrasch specifically. A client GUI, PGN viewer/game saver, game analysis and live chat for the former. Blindfold, set position practice, games against the computer and engine comparison for the latter.
So far SCID (which has many good qualites) with Stockfish engine, is the best I've found on Linux, but I can't configure it to play online (FICS), even though it has that option, and I'm not sure the engine is working optimally either.
Do any Linux users have advice about programmes? I've tried Xboard and Eboard, but they were a bit plain/lacking.