Emulators enable you to play classic games, such as the LucasArts
ScummVM’s Secret of Monkey Island, natively under Linux. There are
emulators for DOS, NES, SNES, and many more platforms. If you are
interested in them, search online for DGen/SDL, DOSBox, xtrs, FCE Ultra,
GnGeo, SDLMame, ScummVM, and Stella. The documentation for emulators
is hit or miss, but if you are lucky, you might be able to play your favorite old
games for consoles or operating systems that no longer exist or that current
OS versions do not support.
Installing Proprietary Video Drivers
A major gripe of Linux users has been the difficulty involved in getting
modern 3D graphics cards to work. Thankfully, both AMD (owner of the
now-defunct ATI brand) and NVIDIA support Linux, albeit by using
proprietary drivers. This means that Ubuntu does not ship with native 3D
drivers activated for either graphics card, but they can easily be installed,
often during or just after the operating system is installed. These drivers are
needed for most visually spectacular games.
NOTE
As of this writing, because of issues with the way the drivers function,
Ubuntu has ceased to provide the AMD proprietary video drivers; instead,
it provides an open source option that is easier to work with and that works
more consistently. However, the open source option does not currently
work as well as the AMD proprietary driver for high-end graphics work.
Accordingly, our current suggestion is to avoid AMD video cards until this
is sorted out.Both NVIDIA and AMD produce proprietary drivers, meaning that the source
code is not open or available for outside developers to read or modify.
Because of this, it is hard for some Linux distros to include them as part of
their standard installation. The Ubuntu community has taken a pragmatic
approach of including the NVIDIA drivers within the main Ubuntu distro, but
they’re disabled by default. Therefore, anyone who has NVIDIA hardware
can activate those drivers to take advantage of their features.
NOTE
If you think that using proprietary drivers is the only way on Linux, we
should mention that there is a lot of development going into providing
totally free and open source drivers for slightly older graphics cards.
Ubuntu automatically selects the best “free” driver for your system and
allows you to switch the proprietary driver if you want to. Although the