I have some promising news for those of you who play on Linux. While official support isn't ready just yet, I wanted to share the results of some recent experiments.
I spent some time this week creating and testing a native Linux build of Just Chess, running it on a live USB version of Ubuntu. During this preliminary test, I'm happy to report that everything appeared to work flawlessly.
Test System Specs:
OS: Ubuntu (Live USB)
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D
GPU: AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX
Here's a quick rundown of what was tested and confirmed working:
UCI Engine Support: I was able to successfully link a native Linux version of Stockfish and run a full engine-vs-engine game without any issues.
Lichess Integration: The Lichess authorization flow and the Puzzle Arena all functioned as expected.
Internal AI: The built-in AI opponent was also fully operational.
Visually, the build was indistinguishable from the Windows version, and I didn't encounter any graphical glitches or performance problems during this initial run. While these results are very encouraging, I want to be clear that this was a brief, surface-level test. A potential Linux release would still require a fair amount of work on the Steam backend to properly configure, package, and support.
This post is mainly to gauge interest. A native Linux version seems very achievable in the near future. Please let me know in the comments if this is something you'd like to see!