Gaming has been an essential part of the PC experience since the days of IBM mainframes. But a focus on the latest graphics and AAA titles has left the classics neglected.

Embrace the nostalgia of computerized single-player card games by playing Klondike Solitaire within your Linux terminal.

A Brief History of Card Games on Computers

Solitaire is a card game you play on your own, and involves physically moving cards from one pile to another. Aside from the mental agility and memory needed to play Solitaire, it also requires some degree of hand-eye coordination.

Microsoft Windows 3.0 was arguably the first desktop operating system released with the general public in mind. It came with Klondike Solitaire pre-installed to get users used to the analogy of a desktop, and familiarize them with basic mouse functions such as clicking and drag and drop.

To make things easier, a free Solitaire card game was included in every Windows release between 1990 and 2012.

When Linux appeared on the scene in 1996, some early distros included Solitaire as a way of making users feel at home, and as a means to pass the time while installing software.

Today, there are hundreds of free Solitaire games for Linux.

Why Would You Want to Play Solitaire in Your Terminal

Not everyone is a fan of graphical user interfaces (GUIs), and not everyone wants to play the latest graphics-intensive first-person shooters. Maybe you're connecting to a remote machine using SSH and need to kill a few minutes while you're on your lunch break.

The most convincing and honest reason to play Solitaire in your terminal is: because you can.

Install solitaire-tui on Linux

solitaire-tui is written using Google's Go language, and you need to have Go installed on your system before you start.

An easy way to install Go is from the Snap Store. So if your system supports snap packages, you can use this command to install Go:

        sudo snap install go --classic
    

Make sure to install Snap on your system if you don't have it set up already.

Now use Go to install the latest version of solitaire-tui:

        go install github.com/brianstrauch/solitaire-tui@latest
    

The package will install to the /go/bin/ subdirectory within your home directory. To allow easy access so any user can start it from any terminal location, create a symbolic link:

        sudo ln -s ~/go/bin/solitaire-tui /usr/bin/solitaire
    

You can now launch solitaire-tui by typing:

        solitaire
    

Playing Solitaire in the Linux Terminal

Playing Solitaire in your terminal with solitaire-tui is a blast from the past. While the app looks great, given the obvious terminal limitations, it's missing some of the bells and whistles we've grown used to with Solitaire.

There's no autoplay feature, for example, so you have to finish the game manually under all circumstances. There's also no drag-and-drop function. Click on a card with your mouse to highlight it, then click where you want it to go. It will be instantly transported.

If you're looking forward to a snazzy trumpet fanfare, and animation to signal your victory, you'll be disappointed, too. There's no acknowledgment that you've won, and there's no fanfare either.

But that's OK. There's no fanfare in the real-life version either.

solitaire-tui does exactly what it's supposed to do, and is an excellent way of killing five minutes without leaving your terminal.

There Are Other Ways to Entertain Yourself in the Terminal

Playing card games is a great way to spend a lunch break or some downtime. But while you may be improving your Solitaire skills, you're not improving your mind. Get ahead in your studies by speed-reading textbooks and great works of literature.