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The Best Command-Line-Only Video Games, Part II
Because one list of ridiculously awesome, text-only games just isn't enough.
March 03, 2024
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If you plunk down "Best terminal games" into any search engine... you're going to find a whole heck of a lot of the same results.  Repeated.  Over and over again.

Article after article listing the same text-based, simplified versions of Space Invaders, Tetris, and Sudoku.

Which is fine.  We need fun little versions of those games in our Linux (or macOS, or Windows) shell.

But... what if you're looking for something... more?  Deeper games.  More visually impressive games.  But still entirely in your text-mode shell?

It was for this very reason that I published -- some time back -- a list of the "Best Command-Line-Only Games".  And, while that first list is -- indeed -- truly awesome... we have only scratched the surface of amazing terminal games.

So buckle up, Buttercup.  Because I've got some more awesome text-mode games for you.  Behold!  Part 2!

Gorched

Scorched Earth (aka "The Mother of All Games") was a mainstay of DOS gaming in the early 1990s. 

Take turns launching a variety of munitions (with adjusted angles and power) at your friends.  A simple, but addictive formula -- one which the "Worms" series of games has used for years.

And "Gorched" recreates the core of that game... entirely in ANSI / ASCII art.  All right in your terminal.

The Mother of All ASCII Games

Awesome, right?  The darn thing even has clouds floating through the sky.  Not too shabby for a Shell-only game.

DOOM-ASCII

What if you could play DOOM... entirely in a terminal?

Not a 2D recreation... the actual game.  3D.  But... you know... in ASCII art instead of pixels?

Yeah.  It's real.

I'm not kidding here.  It's DOOM.  And it's playable.

How rad is that?!  

Curse of War

Here's a slightly unconventional Real-Time Strategy game: Curse of War.

The overall mechanics are pretty simple and approachable: move your armies, build your infrastructure, get more resources.  But you don't build and maneuver a bunch of specific units.  It's much more... high level.

Pokete - Grey Edition

This is, essentially, a Pokemon like game.  For Linux.  In ASCII art.

Which... awesome.

Simple.  Recognizable.  Yeah, it's Pokemon.  Kinda.

Battles.  Exploration.  It's all here.  And, while there are some rough edges, the overall game is not too darn shabby!

Wolfentext3D 

Take the overall look of Wolfenstein 3D.  Implement it entirely in a 3D ASCII engine.

It's not really much like the original game which inspired it.  It's more of a simple maze game.  But it looks like Wolfenstein 3D in the terminal.  Which is nifty.

Impressive, right?  And it runs on Windows, Mac, & Linux (though it does require Ruby).

GameShell

This one is a little... different.

It's a shell game... built entirely to teach people who to use UNIX style shell commands.

The player goes on a series of missions in a fantasy world... and the only way to accomplish your goals... is to learn to use commands like "ls" and "pwd".

Nifty, right?

Brogue: Community Edition

You can't go wrong with a good Rogue-like!  Hack!  Slash!  ASCII!

And Brogue is a truly excellent one.

Randomly generated, 26-level dungeon.  Both complex and visually pleasing.  While there are oh-so-many Rogue-like games in this world, Brogue is worth at least a quick look.

That brings us to the end of this list.  If you haven't checked out the previous list, I highly recommend it.  There are a great many, truly fantastic text-mode games in this world... and it would be a shame to miss out on any of them.

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"Andreas Kling creator of Serenity OS & Ladybird Web Browser" - Lunduke’s Big Tech Show - September 13th, 2023 - Ep 044

Well, my website is finally back online after I figured out what broke. It took me a couple years to finally get around to it though XD

https://althacker.xyz

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I shouldn't be surprised but DHH is coming under fire in the Framework community and in the moderation circles. They are saying that Framework shouldn't be promoting DHH's review of the Framework Desktop because he is a racists and transphobe. None of those claims are substantiated.It is the typical smearing of anyone who doesn't follow the trans ideology to the T.

I really hope that Nirav will have some backbone and will ignore this. They ignored the outcry that Bazzite was trying to solicit to little kids. They should be able to ignore these claims as well.

I really miss the days where we didn't care about someone's political beliefs. We only focused on what they were saying right then.

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Hello all of you amazing nerds!

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Number of Orphaned Linux Kernel Modules Doubles in 2 Years
Intel layoffs & Russian bans have contributed to a growing number of abandoned Linux Kernel Modules -- which now make up over 8% of all Linux modules.

Over the last few days, a number of Linux Kernel modules have officially become “Orphaned” — meaning they no longer have a maintainer to look after them in any way.

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This most recent surge in “Orphan” Linux Kernel modules is due to a round of fairly massive layoffs happening at Intel, with the company reducing total staff by tens of thousands before the end of this year.

And, of course, among those being laid off are multiple programmers who were paid maintainers of Linux Kernel modules. Things like the Intel CPU temperature drivers, Slim Bootloader, and the Time of Day clock. All are now “Orphan” modules, with more expected over the coming months.

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Which, naturally, included the Linux Kernel.

How Many Orphans Are There?

All of which begs the question… exactly how many Linux Kernel Modules now have no maintainer at all?

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And, as of August 8th, 2025, there were 138 Kernel Modules specifically listed as having a Status of “Orphan”.

But that only tells us part of the story. What we really need to know is how fast the number of Orphan Modules is growing… and what percentage, of all modules, are not maintained.

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Over the last 2 years — between August of 2023 and August of 2025 — the number of “Orphan” modules in the Linux kernel grew from 75 to 138.

They nearly doubled.

Now let’s look at the percentage of Orphaned Modules.

Since we know that there are roughly 2,496 Modules which have an active maintainer (give or take, based on a quick look at the MAINTAINERS file) that means that a little over 5% of all Linux Kernel modules… are orphans.

 

Though that doesn’t tell the whole story.

There is also another category of Kernel Module where the status is listed as “Odd Fixes”. Meaning “It has a maintainer but they don’t have time to do much.”

If we consider those modules as also “Not Maintained” (along with the “Orphan” Modules), the total percentage of un-maintained Kernel Modules grows to 8.6%.

 

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While it’s reasonable to assume that some of the most critical Kernel Modules will get new (often volunteer) maintainers — thus saving them from becoming true “Orphans” — many will fall into an abandoned state. As has been the case over the last few years.

What result that will have on the Linux kernel — and the broader Linux ecosystem — remains to be seen. But we’ll find out soon enough.

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Lunduke's Non-Woke Software List (for August, 2025)
From Operating Systems to Web Browsers. There's lots of Woke Software out there. Let's take a look at some decidedly NON-Woke options.
There’s a heck of a lot of Woke Software out there. Especially in the Open Source world.

What, exactly, is “Woke Software”? Glad you asked. Because I’ve defined it.

 

Simple, right?

I’m sure we can all think of some examples. Mozilla Firefox, NixOS, Godot, and a whole mountain of others.

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Luckily there is a growing number of decidedly Non-Woke options. And, even better, some of them are truly outstanding. Below I have collected my personal favorites as of August of 2025.

Operating Systems

Multiple Non-Woke Linux Distributions (and even a few BSD options) are available.

  • OpenMandriva - A classic Linux distribution.

  • GhostBSD - A FreeBSD based distro focused on usability.

  • Omarchy - An Arch + Hyprland configuration.

  • Devuan - A fork of Debian without SystemD.

I can personally vouch for the quality of all of those options. They are all unique and worth taking for a test-drive.

My personal favorite? OpenMandriva.

Web Browsers

As of right now, there are two web browsers I can recommend.

  • Brave - A Chromium based browser focused on privacy and ad blocking.

  • Ladybird - A from-scratch browser (not yet usable for a daily driver).

Though, honestly, only Brave is truly usable, right now, as a daily driver. But Ladybird is making such rapid progress that it seems worth including in this list to keep an eye on.

E-Mail Clients

If you’re looking for a desktop Email client, there’s really only one noteworthy option at the moment.

While Betterbird has not made a point of being Non-Woke, they are a fork of Mozilla Thunderbird. And Mozilla is the king of Open Source Wokeness.

Other Software

Here’s a few Non-Woke pieces of software which just don’t fit in the other categories. Hopefully, as the quantity of decidedly Non-Woke, quality software grows, we’ll have enough to add a few additional categories.

  • Redot - A fork of the Godot game engine.

  • XLibre - A fork of the Xorg X11 Server.

  • Hyprland - A Wayland window manager / Desktop Environment.

  • SQLite - A small, fast SQL database engine.

Once again, all quality, recommended software.

While this list may not be a mile long, it’s growing — and many of these projects are seeing significant success. Which is pretty fantastic.

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