Chess for Linux

A native Linux rebuild of Apple's Chess application, with a Kirigami desktop interface, Rust game controller and engine, and Vulkan 3D renderer. Play against the computer or a friend, explore four chess variants, and customize the board with the original piece geometry and artwork. Runs on Wayland and X11.

Getting started · Features · Screenshots · Controls · Linux guide · Licenses

Features

• Four variants: Standard, Crazyhouse, Suicide, and Losers, with variant-specific rules, promotions, and game results.
• Flexible opponents: play locally with two humans, choose either computer side, or watch computer versus computer. Adjust thinking time and search depth; optionally use the original Sjeng engine.
• Interactive 3D board: click or drag pieces, orbit the camera, and zoom. Vulkan rendering includes reflections, shadows, animated moves, and antialiasing.
• Custom appearance: choose Wood, Marble, Metal, or Grass boards and Wood, Marble, Metal, or Fur pieces. Tune lighting and materials independently.
• Review and analysis: move history, hints, undo/redo, comments, and saved alternative continuations.
• Game documents: multiple tabs, recent files, session recovery, native .chess-linux saves, Apple .chess import/export, and single-game PGN import/export.
• Play over TCP: direct two-player sessions with chat, draw offers, agreed takebacks, and resignation.
• Accessible 2D view: labelled Qt square buttons, keyboard navigation, and Qt accessibility support for Linux screen readers.
• Optional extras: spoken moves, offline microphone input, PNG screenshots, MP4 recording, desktop notifications, and a local JSON scripting interface.

Getting started

Requirements

• Linux with a Wayland or X11 desktop session.
• Rust 1.95 or newer, Cargo, a C++17 compiler and pkg-config.
• Qt 6.5 or newer development packages for Qt Quick, QML and Quick Controls, including moc and rcc.
• KDE Kirigami 6 and qqc2-desktop-style QML modules at runtime.
• A working Vulkan driver and loader for your GPU.
• A desktop platform integration or XDG desktop portal for native file dialogs.

On Arch Linux or CachyOS, install the desktop build dependencies with:

sudo pacman -S --needed base-devel qt6-base qt6-declarative kirigami qqc2-desktop-style

Build and run

From the repository root:

cargo build --release --locked
./target/release/chess-linux

The artwork, QML interface and Noto fonts are embedded in the binary; Qt and Kirigami are system dependencies. You can also open a saved game directly or start without restoring the previous session:

./target/release/chess-linux game.pgn
./target/release/chess-linux game.chess
./target/release/chess-linux --fresh

Install locally

./scripts/install.sh

This builds the release binary and installs the application, desktop launcher, icon, file associations, and documentation into ~/.local. Ensure ~/.local/bin is in your PATH. Use PREFIX=/path ./scripts/install.sh to choose another installation directory.

See the Linux guide for optional dependencies, file compatibility, networking, scripting, and verification details.

Screenshots

These captures show the native Kirigami desktop application: material choices in Preferences and the accessible 2D board with player cards and move history.

Appearance settings	Accessible 2D board

Controls

Action	Control
Move a piece	Click a piece and its destination, or drag it
Rotate and tilt the board	Right-drag
Zoom	Scroll
Turn the board around	F
New / open / save game	Ctrl+N / Ctrl+O / Ctrl+S
Undo / redo	Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z
Show hint / last move	] / [
Select a square with the keyboard	Arrow keys, then Enter
Clear selection	Escape
Full screen	F11

The command field accepts UCI moves (e2e4), SAN (Nf3, O-O), Crazyhouse drops (N@e4), and phrases such as knight to f three or take back move. In Crazyhouse, you can also select a captured piece from the pocket and click its drop square.

Open Preferences to change materials, switch to the 2D board, choose computer players, or set up speech. Reviewing history pauses computer play; choose Resume to continue.

Optional integrations

Integration	Setup
Original Sjeng engine	Run ./scripts/build-sjeng.sh, then set the absolute path to target/sjeng/sjeng in Preferences. Requires a C compiler and GDBM compatibility development headers/libraries.
Spoken moves	Install espeak and enable speech in Preferences.
Offline voice input	Install Python 3, vosk, and sounddevice; set a compatible local Vosk model folder in Preferences.
MP4 recording	Install ffmpeg with the libx264 encoder, then use Share → Record game.
Desktop notifications	Install notify-send.

The built-in Rust engine, board play, and document handling work without these optional integrations. Direct TCP play connects Linux instances; it does not connect to Apple's SharePlay or Game Center services.

Development and verification

GitHub Actions automatically checks and builds the native Linux application and a WASI Wayland frontend for Wawona on pushes and pull requests. Each successful build uploads downloadable packages. The wasm artifact includes the module, licenses and a SHA-256 catalog fragment for submission to repo.wawona.io/wasm. Matching v<VERSION> tags publish release archives after verification. The native archive requires the Qt/Kirigami and Vulkan system dependencies listed above.

Build the Wawona package locally with:

rustup target add wasm32-wasip1
./scripts/build-wasm.sh

Its 2D frontend supports all four variants, pointer/touch input, typed moves, promotion, history and the Rust engine. See the Wawona guide for runtime instructions, feature limits and catalog submission.

Run the standard checks:

./scripts/check.sh

This checks formatting, Clippy, automated tests, and an offscreen Vulkan render. With a working desktop session, Python 3, and ffmpeg, also exercise the native GUI and two-instance network play:

CHESS_GUI_CHECK=1 ./scripts/check.sh

For a standalone renderer check:

./target/release/chess-linux --render-check board.png

Generated verification output goes into the ignored artifacts/ directory. README screenshots live in docs/images/.

Source	Purpose
qml/, src/kirigami.rs, native/	Kirigami interface, Rust application controller and small Qt bridge
src/app.rs	Shared preferences/recovery and optional previous egui interface (--egui)
src/game.rs, src/document.rs	Rules, history, and game documents
src/engine.rs, src/legacy_engine.rs	Rust search and optional Sjeng adapter
src/render.rs, src/board.wgsl	Vulkan rendering and shaders
src/network.rs, src/speech.rs, src/recording.rs, src/automation.rs	Network play, speech, recording, and scripting
scripts/	Installation, checks, and asset conversion

Licenses and origin

This repository retains the source for Apple's Chess.app 3.0, shipped with Mac OS X 10.8, alongside the Linux rebuild.

• New Rust application, QML interface and Qt bridge: GNU GPL version 3 or later.
• Bundled Noto fonts: SIL Open Font License 1.1.
• Original Apple frontend, artwork, and piece geometry: Apple Sample Code License, preserved in the original README.
• Original Sjeng engine: GNU GPL version 2 or later; see sjeng/COPYING.

See NOTICE for attribution and component details. This port is not endorsed by Apple.