I love computer games. I have done ever since playing the isometric Batman adventure game for my first computer, an Amstrad 6128K, on a green monochrome monitor. My current platform of choice is a playstation 3. I used to be a big windows gamer, but have since switched all my computers over to running Ubuntu Linux (mainly due to exasperation with Windows).

Now the playstation is great for gaming, buy isn’t really suitable for casual play, not to mention the fact that as its plugged into the big tv downstairs, I have to make sure I don’t monopolise use of the living room.

All this has driven me to explore the current state of gaming on linux. To my surprise I found quite a few games in the Ubuntu repositories. A few of the picks are listed below.

• Battle for Wesnoth – an excellent turn based strategy game.
• Tux Racer – a classic. Simple but addictive.
• Aleph One – the open source Marathon engine. Marathon was the FPS game series released by Bungie studios before their Halo success. Great story line and world creation in this game.
• Frets on Fire – a guitar hero clone that is surprisingly as addictive as the real thing.
• Nethack – gets a special mention. No fancy graphics, bloody confusing at first and huge learning curve, but once you grasp it – surprisingly addictive and very fun . Play on the public nethack server on alt.org.