Free chess board software for linux

Tonic Chess project is an online chess software.

Tonic is a graphical interface for playing online chess. It is based on Jin.

From now on Tonic is really open source software (and free as in libre as well) - I managed (I had some problems last time I tried) to import source to cvs sourceforge repository. It is a bridge2 release source with few little modifications. You can read how to get it from cvs here. If you are impatient pastenenter in console:

cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@tonic-chess.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/tonic-chess login

When prompted for password just hit enter. And then:

cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@tonic-chess.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/tonic-chess co -P tonic

You should see a list of files downloaded from cvs repository. If you are a non-console user (i.e. Windows or Mac user) I recommend visiting this site. I myself use Linux for development. And Netbeans sometimes as you could figure out from examining the contents of tonic directory. So, enjoy the opensourceness of Tonic!

I uploaded new screenshot to Tonic project site. It is Tonic in Aero GTK engine tuxedo. Quite a peculiar engine imo, but you can use other GTK engines if you run Tonic in Java 6 aka Mustang (you know you can get it from here, dont you?) I test Tonic with Mustang and Ive problems with tray icon. After some searching Ive realized why Tonic crashed under Java 6 - the problem was tray.jar plugin and its dependencies - tray.so or tray.dll, so if you want to run Tonic on Java 6 move them away from theirs directory. Ive written a class for tray icon using new desktop API from Mustang, but it doesnt work as expected in KDE (tray icon is invisible) ; GNOME is better, but I have to work on the popup menu. Well, what could I say? Mustang is in beta stage, but it has some goodies to wait for (early splashscreen, access to tab component, ...).

ChessX is a free Open Source Chess Database for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. The project uses Qt library to create modern, portable graphical interface. Current development is aimed at providing full featured PGN database. Afterwards we will add more flexible native format.
History
The project was started after development of Scid halted and contact with the author was lost. Initially, ChessX was to be a community maintained version of Scid called "New Scid". However, after some initial development, it was decided to break away from the old code so that new ideas and modern interface can be implemented.
Main features:
- Multi-platform. Supports Linux, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS
- Read-only support for PGN Files
- Work with multiple databases simultaneously
- Browse games
- Navigate through game, including variations
- Copy/Paste FEN/PGN
- Enter moves, setup board position
- Basic header search (click on columns in GameList header)
- Player database with picture support

eboard is a chess board interface for playing and studying chess.

eboard is a graphical client to internet chess servers, an interface to computer chess engines and a tool for visualization, analysis and study of chess games.

Chessweb is a J2EE chess game Website. It is a pure Java servlet implementation of a two-player chess game.

Two players log into the Web site, see an image of the current board in their browser, and make their moves.

The differentiating features of chessweb (e.g. versus WinBoard / XBoard) is that its an extremely lightweight implementation written completely in Java (nothing more than an app server and browser is required).

Furthermore, the client end is DHTML only, and verified to works with FireFox 1.0.6 and IE 6.

AntiChess project is an anti-chess game.

AntiChess is an anti-chess game written in Java.

The goal is to get checkmated or lose all your pieces except your king to your opponent.

You must take your opponents pieces if you can.

It supports 2 player and 4 player games on the same board

Emacs Chess is an object-oriented library written in Elisp for manipulating chess objects (games, plies, positions, etc.), and for displaying them.
Main features:
- Emacs Chess is also an object-oriented library for manipulating chess objects (games, plies, positions, etc), and for displaying them. It supports a wide range of engine objects to use as move sources. This what allows chess.el to act as a chess client.
- chess-announce.el announces your opponents moves verbally, such as "knight takes at f4"provided you have "festival" installed.
- chess-sound.el is similar to chess-announce, but uses specific WAV files for each sound used. It takes up much more disk space, but is nicer to listen to. Available in English only at the moment.
- chess-irc.el provides a tiny IRC bot, allowing you to play games over IRC so long as your opponent enters moves in short algebraic notation. If they dont have chess.el, all they need is a regular chessboard, and a knowledge of SAN (short alegebraic notation).
- chess-ics.el lets you to play on Internet Chess Servers, using chess.el as your chessboard display (which means chess-announce works with it, etc). It has only been tested with FICS so far.
- chess-crafty.el, chess-gnuchess.el and chess-phalanx.el let you play against the Crafty, Gnuchess and Phalanx engines.
- chess-random.el will create Fischer Random positions to play against. Note that this feature only really works against opponents who are also using chess.el. Simply type "S" in the chessboard display buffer to setup a Fischer Random starting position.
- chess-network.el lets you play against other chess.el users directly, over a single open port on the server side. To be a server, you must have "netcat" installed, or be using Emacs 21.3 or higher (which supports server side network sockets). To be a client, all you need is Emacs 21.1 or higher.
- chess-link.el lets you tie two engines together, so that events from one are responded to by events from another. This can let you run a chess bot on your computer over any of the transport, or you can use it to pit two computer chess engines against each other.
- chess.el can even export chessboard display to other X servers, allowing you to play against people in your meeting room, even if they dont have Emacs installed!
Enhancements:
- This maintenance release includes several bugfixes.

IRC-Chess project is a 2-player chess game for IRC which turns a computer into an IRC chess bot.

It consists of a Java chess server, with frontend scripts to convert an IRC client into a chess bot. Players then communicate with the bot using standard IRC commands, and dont require any special software to play.

Frontend scripts are available for IRSSI and X-Chat.

The client is merely responsible for interpreting this data and displaying it. In this way, porting the system to a variety of IRC clients is very simple, since
the client script will be short, and effectively contain no code specific to the game being played.

In other words, the Java part is smart. The script is dumb and is just there to make things look pretty.

This idea works. Currently, client scripts have been designed for RSSI and XChat. Since both these programs use Perl for scripting, the scripts are practically identical, with a few client specific modifications.

Porting this script to other IRC clients shouldnt be too much of a hassle, since its just the frontend thats ported, not the chess game itself. Anyone wanting to create frontend scripts for other IRC clients, please feel free to do so.

The PROTOCOL file describes exactly what needs to be done.