This article is part of the first-person shooter games reviews I'm putting up. Until now I talked about Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, ioQuake3, UT2004, Nexuiz and OpenArena.

If you're a gamer or a recent linux switcher you probably think you can't play Windows games on  your linux box - or that they will run very slow and crash because they are emulating the Windows DirectX API.

Playing Windows games on Linux is not really a difficult task. Most gamers are reluctant to migrate to Linux because they have this misconception that Windows games cannot be played on Linux. How wrong they are. If you are one of those avid gamers that I mentioned above, here are 4 ways that you can play Windows games on Linux.

Hothead Games will soon be launching a new title based on the popular online Penny Arcade comic strip. Even better, the new game will be available for several platforms at its launch, including Linux.

Google did not mention that the latest version of Google Earth has a build-in flying simulator! It works on all platforms, including Linux. The Linux version even worked with my joystick.

Press Ctrl-Alt-A, choose your plane and airport, and start flying.

Here are two more great open source Linux games that you may not have tried yet: VDrift and Secret Maryo Chronicles.

Here are two more great open source Linux games that you may not have tried yet: VDrift and Secret Maryo Chronicles.

VDrift
http://vdrift.net/
DEB package available at GetDeb

VDrift is a driving simulator made with a focus on drift racing. It includes 19 tracks and 28 cars.

Secret Maryo Chronicles
http://www.secretmaryo.org/
DEB package available at GetDeb

Secret Maryo is a platform game which recently reached version 1.0.

If you’ve switched to Ubuntu (as I have) or any other Linux distribution, you may consider the following free (and in most cases open-source) games, as they’ve been favorites of mine for some time now.

Finding an addictive computer game on a Friday evening can be dangerous. Instead of doing things you have been promising your wife, you spend the weekend in front of your computer playing the game and trying to explain that "this is for work." This is exactly what happened to me when I discovered Battle Tanks.