Jesse Gersenson wrote on 03/27/10 at 19:24:36:
Vladimir, your make instructions got robbolito working. thanks.
there are a number of chess engines for linux but is there another trick for getting them to work in, say, scid? with some engines the make command has worked. with others, i didn't even need the make command, and still with others, such as
doch32-134-ja
komodo-10-32-ja
i can't them working.
Did you set the engine to be executable as I said in this post? Sometimes I forget to do so and then slap myself after twenty minutes of fruitless tinkering.
Vladimir wrote on 03/18/10 at 19:32:53:
Other engines on Linux sometimes come in pre-compiled executables like on Windows. For example, Spark and Komodo are closed source, so they will only be available as executables. There's one hitch when using them, however.
I've downloaded Spark 0.3a, and extracted it to my chess engines folder as well. The executable is just sitting there, but you can't install it in Scid just yet. Right click the executable (named spark-0.3-linux64 in my case), hit properties, and then the Permissions tab in the properties window. Check the "Allow executing file as program" box and then hit close. Alternatively, you could do the same thing in the command line by changing directory to Spark's folder, and typing the command
chmod +x spark-0.3-linux64
The chmod command
changes the
mode of the executable to actually be executable (+x), i.e., since you just downloaded it, the file didn't have the correct permission to execute.
You can then install it into Scid much the same as you did Stockfish, making sure it runs correctly. I think that's it, but if something goes wrong or you have any more questions, feel free to ask.
I don't want to incite a flame war, but I do want to say a few things. As for the difficulty in using Linux, I'll agree it has a few rough edges and needs a little computer savvy. However, I think many of the complaints are from people who tried it expecting a drop-in replacement for Windows. It just works differently, which is neither good nor bad, and necessarily requires learning. I guess that leads to teething pains, but it's rewarding to persevere.
As an aside, a whole lot of things don't
need to be done at the command line. Doing so is only for convenience, i.e., it's easier for someone to tell you a command to copy and paste than to write what menus to navigate through to get to the button you need to press.
Chess is fine on Linux. Really, the only things that most people miss on Linux are video games, some crucial propietary software (Photoshop, AutoCAD, Chessbase, etc.) that they may need for their jobs, and anti-virus software. Well, maybe not that last one. For most things there aren't suitable replacements for (such as GIMP, OpenOffice, Scid), there's Wine.
Essentially, like everything else, what you want out of it depends on what you want to put into it.