To start playing, press your spacebar. Use the right and left cursor keys to move your ship across the screen, and your spacebar to fire. For more information, see the README file under the /usr/doc/xgalaga directory.

Breakout the Fun with the X11 Client Xboing

Xboing, by Justin C. Kibell, is a fast-paced, arcade-quality paddle and ball game for the X Window System. This game sports great graphics and sound, and provides hours of fun. You can start the xboing program from the command line of a terminal window. You'll need a display of at least 1024¥768 pixels to play.

By default, xboing does not use sound, so if you want to hear sounds when you play, you must use the -sound command-line option. Set the speed of the ball's action after playing a game to fine-tune xboing's challenge by using the -speed option.

# xboing -sound -speed 7

This command line starts xboing with sound enabled, and a very fast ball speed. Another good option to use is -grab, which keeps your cursor within xboing's X11 window, preventing you from accidentally activating other windows and missing any action. For more details about playing this game, see the xboing manual page.

Playing DOOM for X Window

DOOM, by id Software, is one of the most popular arcade games to hit the personal computer scene in recent years. You'll find a copy on this book's CD-ROM, and you can play DOOM from the console or from an X11 terminal window.

If you start DOOM from the command line as a regular user, you may experience permission errors. If so, use the su command to start the game as the root operator:

# su -c "rundoom"

You'll be asked if your computer can support sound. Type a y or n, then press the Enter key to start the game. If you start DOOM from an X11 terminal window, the game starts in a small, floating window. Some documentation for running DOOM may be found under the /usr/doc/doom directory.