Chess Software for openSUSE

[Akoellh]

Get it here:

Index of /repositories/home:/Akoellh:/Chess

This repository contains several _strong_ chess engines like

- glaurung 2.2 (UCI engine)

- stockfish 1.4 (UCI engine, based on glaurung 2.1)

- crafty 23.0 (nuff said)

- togaII 1.3.1 (UCI engine, based on fruit 2.1)

- togaII 1.4.1 (UCI engine, with multithreading support)

Those engines rate at best with ELO between 2700 and 2800 on recent (and strong) hardware (or even higher, up to 3000 with strong multicore machines), some of them are among the top 20 rated chess engines.

CCRL 40/40 - Index

CCRL 40/4 - Index

CCRL 40/4 FRC - Index

Also included:

- polyglot (recent version, at the time of writing 1.4.38b) - UCI adapter to use the above engines with

- xboard (4.4.0.beta1)

All engine packages contain scripts to directly start them with xboard (xcrafty, xglaurung22, xtogaII-131 ... I think you get the idea).

Other applications:

- scid

A nice chess database application, can also load UCI engines (and non-UCI engines like crafty), allows you also to play matches against chess engines or "training" matches.

More perhaps still to come, what certainly _won't_ be packaged are:

- commercial (non-free as in source available) chess engines like "fruit", "Spike" etc.

- all stuff not available for linux (if you want to mess around with wine, feel free to do so, but setup the stuff yourself)

- standard engines already available (gnuchess, phalanx) or a lot weaker (gnuchess, phalanx :-))

- knights

Looks nice, especially on KDE, but is no longer developed and -sorry- total, utter **** when trying to use UCI engines (i.e. regular crashes, works with "engine is black" but not with "engine is white", because knights is not able telling the electronic, chess playing b.a.s.t.a.r.d to make the first MOVE!)

- other stuff which is no longer maintained

- stuff which is not related to _serious_ chess (= at least advanced amateur and/or club players)

What might be packaged in the future:

- regular updates if available (of course)

- other Suggestions welcome, but I will not promise to package it, even if it matches all the necessary criteria (= does not match one of the "hell no"-criteria above).

[Akoellh]

Some new stuff has been packaged, more engines and also some other goodies.

A) Utilities

1. polyglot (version 1.4.39b)
   
   A UCI adapter, you will need this, if you want to use UCI engines with xboard (or eboard) as frontend (polyglot can also be used as a CLI-interface to UCI-engines).
   
   
2. libegbb3 (version 3.3)
   
   A library to enable endgame table bases ("NalimovBases") in bitboard format, which then can be used with several engines.
   
   All engines (except crafty, who has his own table bases) have been patched to use /usr/share/egbb/ as default path.
   
   - Download table bases in bitboard format from one of the well known chess sites
   
   - Copy them (as root) to /usr/share/egbb
   
   - set symbolic links (as root)
   
   

   ln -s /usr/lib/egbbso.so /usr/share/egbb/egbbso.so # i586
   
   ln -s /usr/lib64/egbbso.so /usr/share/egbb/egbbso.so # x86_64
   
   ln -s /usr/lib64/egbbso.so /usr/share/egbb/egbbso64.so # x86_64 for "scorpio"

   and enjoy.

B) Engines

1. crafty (Version 23.0)
   
   The xboard-package in this repository uses crafty as standard engine.
   
   
2. fruit (UCI engine, version 2.1)
   
   Version 2.1 was the last version under GPL, so don't expect updates here.
   
   
3. glaurung (UCI engine)
   
   - version 1.2.1
   

   Originally Posted by Tord Romstad (Author of glaurung)

   This is the previous stable version of glaurung and also a very strong chess engine.
   Glaurung 1.2.1 is probably slightly weaker than glaurung 2, but has a much more entertaining style of play.

   - version 2.2
   
   The new stable version of glaurung, one of the strongest open source engines around.
   
   
4. scorpio (version 2.2)
   
   A winboard/xboard compatible engine, first test matches showed very impressive performance, especially in short (1 minute/game) blitz games.
   
   
5. stockfish (UCI engine, version 1.4)
   
   Based on glaurung 2.1, impressive playing performance, especially in sharp positions.
   
   
6. toga II (UCI engine)
   
   Based on fruit 2.1 and open source, a very strong engine.
   
   - version 1.3.1
   
   The last version with "official" unix support (meaning it had a POSIX-compatible Makefile and compiled "OOTB"), no eggb-support.
   
   - version 1.3.4
   
   Modified with patches and Makefile adapted from version 1.4.1 to compile under linux, first version with eggb-support, latest "stable" version.
   
   - version 1.4.1
   
   Modified with patches for POSIX-support, see Posix ports of some recent version of Toga II for more information.

All engines are packaged with precompiled (and strong!) opening books.

C) GUI Frontends

1. xboard (version 4.4.0.beta2)
   
   The most well known chess GUI for *NIX-type OSes. All engines above contain simple startup scripts to launch them with xboard (i.e. xcrafty, xglaurung121, xscorpio22 ....).
   
   
2. eboard (version 1.1.1)
   
   Nice GUI written in GTK+ 2, works only with winboard compatible engines natively, if you want to use an UCI engine with eboard, you need polyglot as UCI adapter.
   
3. scid
   
   A great database application, highly configurable with a lot of features, it also loads UCI engines directly (so no polyglot needed here).
   
   - version 3.7.3 (the latest stable version)
   
   - version 4.0 beta (named "scid-beta" and versioned 3.9.9_CVS*something* in the repo)
   
   Version 4 of scid uses a new database format, old databases can be converted quite easily, however, as this is a development release => BACKUP YOUR OLD DATABASES!

[oldcpu]

Wow !

Thats great. I have to try some of that software that you have packaged.

I've been maintaining the openSUSE chess wiki (since no one else had done it for a while) but you are welcome to update that wiki.
Games/Chess - openSUSE

I'll also try to keep it up to date

[Akoellh]

Originally Posted by oldcpu

Wow !

Thats great. I have to try some of that software that you have packaged.

Give it a shot.

A few other engines are still "in queue", compiling ist the easiest part (in most cases) but packaging it that they work correctly with startup scripts and use the default paths for everything external (i.e. endgame table bases) and connect nicely to xboard is a PITA sometimes.

The UCI engines are normally the most uncooperative when it comes to xboard, but if you get one of them to run the rest is (was) easy, because it works always in the same way.

Now there are some other engines with their own way of handling config files, paths, ....

So I have to find a unique solution for each one, which is the real PITA.

Originally Posted by oldcpu

I've been maintaining the openSUSE chess wiki (since no one else had done it for a while) but you are welcome to update that wiki.
Games/Chess - openSUSE

Speaking about P(s)ITA(ses), to me writing/changing/maintaining wiki articles is the greater one than packaging stuff with strange behaviour, so sorry, but I'd rather stay with packaging stuff up.

[oldcpu]

Originally Posted by Akoellh

Speaking about P(s)ITA(ses), to me writing/changing/maintaining wiki articles is the greater one than packaging stuff with strange behaviour, so sorry, but I'd rather stay with packaging stuff up.

OK, ... if you do the packaging, and I'll do the wiki updates. If you put any write-ups you want here in this thread, and I'll transcribe / move the information to the wiki as best I can.

I have some ideas now on how to clean up the chess wiki (and also add your information from the 1st two posts in this thread), and I'll start on the wiki update this weekend (possibly sooner).

[Akoellh]

Originally Posted by oldcpu

OK, ... if you do the packaging, and I'll do the wiki updates. If you put any write-ups you want here in this thread, and I'll transcribe / move the information to the wiki as best I can.

Well, as I also used the wiki as a starting point for searching apps and their sources, a few things I found:

1) GambitFruit

not provided with openSUSE, but there is Linux source code and Windows compiled versions on web.

=> No more linux binaries available

2) Arasan

not provided with openSUSE, but there is Linux source code and Windows compiled versions on web

True, but a very strange license, see also FAQ:

" I want to distribute Arasan on a CDROM or in a magazine or though download.

If you distribute it unmodified and are not charging for the software itself, just incidentally for the magazine or a small charge for the CDROM, I'm ok with this. "

Sounds "free" at first glance, but both restrictions render it "unpackageable" for openSUSE (if you take "unmodified" really strict, I could not even patch it to compile and work correctly in linux, which I had to do for nearly every engine).

3) sjeng

not provided with openSUSE, but there is Linux source code on the web.

True, but only very old versions (11.7 over 5 years old and the last version being surely under GPL). I also found source code of a 12.9 version, but that tarball was quite odd.

The file "COPYRIGHT" normally containing a copy of the License (in older versions that was a copy of the GPL v2) was empty although the file "README" contained a statement, that the source was released under GPL. I don't really know what to do with that one.

4) Jose

Jose is a chess database that allows one to view/add games to the database, analyse games with a selected chess engine, and play against the chess engine. A number of different opening books are easily downloadable. It does not come with openSUSE, but because it is java based (requires java-1.4) it runs readily on openSUSE.

Yes and no.

Yes, it runs great under i586 and you would expect it to run also great under x86_64 because it is a java application, ... but:

It uses shared libraries inside its own installation directory and these are only available as 32 bit version, so guess what happens under 64 bit if you want to use one of the functions requiring that librarie(s).

(I give you a hint .... it starts with "c", ends with "ash" and has an "r" somewhere in between.)

And those shared libraries are used for database access, so guess how often that happens in a database application.

Development on jose looks also "dead", but to be more clear, it "looked dead", because maybe

jumcclure's jose-chess at master - GitHub

somebody will pick it up (and make it hopefully also available for x86_64).

5) chessdb

ChessDB is a free chess database which can be used on Microsoft Windows, Linux, Apple Macs running OS X, FreeBSD, and most modern UNIX versions. The program has translations into many languages. It does not come with openSUSE and must be custom compiled, where its compilation is not straight forward.

Well, I didn't try that, but not because of the possible problems compiling and packaging it (that would rather have been a _good reason_ to grab the stuff) but due to this:

ChessDB - a free Chess Database

Looks like scid at first glance, but OK, maybe it's a fork, so

Relationship between ChessDB and Scid

ah, yes, sounds great at first glance but most of those improvements are now in scid and that one is still actively maintained, chessdb looks also "dead" (last commit over 2 years ago).

6) Pgn-Extract

Pgn-Extract is a freeware utility program (for DOS/Unix/Linux) that extracts and manipulates games from PGN-files. You can use many criteria and search/extract doubles, positions, players, move sequence, ECO-codes etc. This program is not provided with openSUSE.
http://www.code.gr/chess-converter/

=> Last update 2003 and no linux binary on that page?

[oldcpu]

Thanks for the update. ... Lots of clean up to do on that wiki I have not really dug into this for a while, but rather have been doing minor maintenance. Your look at this is the first good major look that has been done in some time.

reference: Gambit Fruit

Originally Posted by Akoellh

... a few things I found:

1) GambitFruit

not provided with openSUSE, but there is Linux source code and Windows compiled versions on web.

=> No more linux binaries available

I recall liking that program.

It does look like it is gone. ... I went looking again, and I found this:
http://wbec-ridderkerk.nl/html/downl...t_21_linux.zip
... but I think that is the simple "Fruit" engine and not "Gambit Fruit".

When I checked one of the "download" pages, it was no longer there for Linux (only Windows):
Gambit fruit

I also looked on this chess engine download page:
Chess Downloads
and could not find it.

[oldcpu]

Originally Posted by Akoellh

=> Last update 2003 and no linux binary on that page?

I found a binary here:
Index of FTP Directory for PGN-Extract
I'll update the wiki

Edit: I'm not convinced that URL will work ... if not, one can go here: http://www.enpassant.dk/chess/softeng.htm

[oldcpu]

I added some minor edits to the chess wiki Games/Chess - openSUSE ... but the big cleanup incorporating the first couple of posts from this thread still needs to be done.

[oldcpu]

Originally Posted by Akoellh

Get it here:

Index of /repositories/home:/Akoellh:/Chess

When looking at your repos for 11.1, I note

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/Akoellh:/Chess/openSUSE_11.1/

and

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/Akoellh:/Chess/openSUSE_11.1_Update/

i.e. one is update, and one is not. What is the difference? I note for the alsa sound driver repos, typically the "openSUSE_11.1_Update" corresponds to the latest kernel (2.6.27.29) while the "openSUSE_11.1" corresponds to the stock 2.6.27.7 kernel. What is the criteria you follow for the nominal vs the update? Is it also the kernel version?