Backgammon on LinuxThe best free backgammon AI game, Gnu Backgammon, is available in the Ubuntu/Linux Mint packages (gnubg). There is however a problem. It's slower than it should be. Evaluation is 4-5 times slower than it should be, meaning you have to wait 4-5 times longer than with the Windows (SSE2) version for each move. This is a problem when playing against the stronger AI players and when analyzing games. The package must have been compiled in some strange way, so I tried to compile the game myself in Linux Mint, but it didn't work. It looked like the compilation worked, but the generated executable doesn't start. My solution was to install the windows version in Wine. The game is just as fast as running on windows (I've measured), except for the graphics which is pretty slow. I still prefer this over waiting 5 times longer for each move. Added: After some help, I managed to compile it on Linux using a later version of the source code (1.05.002). The resulting program is just as fast as running gnubg on windows. I would however still reccommend most people to just use the windows version in Wine, because you have to install many megabytes of development packages to be able to compile it, and it's not a very straight forward procedure either.  Back |