Linux Gaming Server Setup?

March 17, 2018 4:17 PM

I have a friend who's interested in playing some games on Linux, for accessibility reasons, the Windows versions aren't super friendly as a blind user. I want to perhaps set up a server for her so she doesn't have to learn an entire new operating system just to play a game. I'd appreciate some guidance.

As a blind gamer, some roguelike games are easier to play on the LInux console, or over SSH and the like, than in Windows natively. In particular, the native Windows versions of ADOM, and Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, are not accessible at all due to the way they draw their text to the screen.

I'm hoping to set up some kind of server or plug-and-play solution, so I don't have to force my friend to install Linux herself. I have a laptop running ArchLinux, but it's ill-suited to server duty.

Is this the kind of thing I can do with a Linode or equivalent? I presume I'll have to get a domain name, ensure its DNS records are properly set up, and so on. I figure it's easier to walk through installing PUTTY than an entire Linux distro.

I'd appreciate any tips, suggestions or advice.

posted by Alensin to Technology (4 answers total)

Best answer: are you aware of Windows Subsystem for Linux? it is an officially-supported part of Windows 10 that gives you a more-or-less actual Linux install. it is extremely easy to set up -- you check some boxes in Control Panel, then install some stuff from the Windows app store.

you can install e.g. Ubuntu, and there will be an option in the Start Menu to open up an Ubuntu shell right alongside your normal windows desktop, on your local machine. as long as this shell program renders text in an accessible way, I think this is probably the easiest option.

if you do end up going the server route, I can't see why you would need a domain name -- you'd just have to type the IP address into PuTTY once. I haven't used Linode but I would feel confident that it would be possible to set this up on Digital Ocean for $5 or $10 a month in minutes (not counting the time to install the games).
posted by vogon_poet at 4:38 PM on March 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I was aware of WSL, and actually have an instance running myself. I didn't know you could enable it by just checking a few boxes, the instructions i found from MS required a command-line or two. That's definitely a thing I can hopefully walk her through. The shell does actually work well with (very new) screen reading software.
posted by Alensin at 4:49 PM on March 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

Another alternative: both of those games appear to work on a raspberry pi. It is fairly easy to pre-configure them to run headless, accessible via ssh. So just a one time cost of a pi zero W plus just about any recent USB cell phone power supply plus whatever sdcard size would hold the files you need to run them.
posted by Poldo at 8:09 PM on March 17, 2018

If WSL doesn't work for you for whatever reason, and you can't use VirtualBox to run up a Linux VM for whatever other reason, and you really want to run a real server on hardware that isn't any of somebody's existing personal computers: look into ultra-cheap tiny machines like the Raspberry Pi Zero. You can build up a machine more than capable of dealing with a roguelike while consuming about as much electricity as a TV on standby, for well under $20.
posted by flabdablet at 8:10 PM on March 17, 2018