Linux friendly engines at all levels

[Volodya]

Dear H.G.Muller and abulmo2,

Thanks for your replies. They are helpful and make a lot of sense.

V.

[Evert]

What he means is that you can use a strong engine (say Stockfish) to simulate a much weaker opponent by allowing it to think only a tiny fraction of the time a truly weak engine would have had to think. It would save you nearly half the CPU time during test games if the opponent would move 100 times faster than the engine under test.

This.
In addition, weaker engines typically have gaps in their evaluation. That means that if your king safety is weak, then a weak engine might not exploit it, meaning you don’t readily notice that your kingsafety is weak. Or worse, you tune your engine in a way that exploits the weaknesses of a particular engine, but playing worse overall. Of course, playing against a gauntlet alleviates some of the problems, but it’s better to eliminate it by playing against an engine with fewer gaps in its evaluation.
There’s one caveat, of course, and that’s that not all evaluation terms scale the same with increased time control, but it makes sense to retune things as your engine progresses anyway.

By the way, this is anecdotal evidence at best; I don’t have data to back up this observation.

[vincent]

Little Wing at 2050 ELO is well tested on GNU/Linux and stable even in very fast games: https://github.com/vinc/littlewing

Purple Haze at 1900 ELO is older but also well tested: https://github.com/vinc/purplehaze

[rkl]

It only covers the top engines based on CCRL ratings, but you might like my page:

https://linuxchess.richardlloyd.org.uk/

It includes links to source code and Linux binaries where available. I've tested every engine listed - some need Wine to work though and a few don't work on Linux at all (I've kept them in mainly to match their CCRL ranking).

Interesting to note that yesterday's CCRL update saw a small ELO gain for most engines, but a big 10 ELO drop for Stockfish!

[Michel]

GnuCheese

http://hardy.uhasselt.be/GnuCheese/

A cleaned up version of GnuChess 5 (not 6 which is just Fruit 2.1!).

+-2800 on CCRL 40/40.

[OliverBr]

Platform friendly, WIn, Mac and Linux is OliThink: https://github.com/olithink/OliThink

[jdart]

Arasan is past the high end of your ELO range now but it runs on Linux and there is a variable-strength feature.

Komodo has had Linux versions for a long time and earlier versions are freeware now (https://komodochess.com/downloads.htm).

[mhouppin]

Stash should cover a wide zone of your 2000-2700 Elo range, and very easy to build on Linux: https://gitlab.com/mhouppin/stash-bot

Acording to CCRL 40/4 ratings and personal testing:

Code: Select all

v21.0: 2720 Elo
v20.4: 2630 Elo (commit hash: 2056f46e)
v20.0: 2530 Elo
v18.0: 2440 Elo
v17.0: 2350 Elo
v16.0: 2290 Elo
v15.0: 2230 Elo
v14.0: 2100 Elo
v13.0: 2030 Elo
v12.0: 1970 Elo

[hgm]

Does it really makes sense to revive a nearly 2 year old thread?

[D Sceviour]

Does it really makes sense to revive a nearly 2 year old thread?

It depends on the thread. This popular thread has almost 6000 views, so it has obviously been researched by others. The "Linux friendly" topic title makes it useful for others to look for information from a search. It is a good spot to add further engine information.

The last version of Schooner2.2 has Linux capability.