Stockfish — a powerful open-source chess engine

. . . packaged for Fedora and CentOS

What's a chess engine?
You know when you play a game of chess and choose "Play the computer?" The chess engine is the computer.

Stockfish . . .
Stockfish is a free chess engine. It is not a complete chess program, but requires a UCI-compatible graphical user interface (GUI) in order to be used comfortably (e.g. PyChess (which I also build for Fedora), Gnome Chess, and many more). Read the documentation for your GUI of choice for information about how to use Stockfish with it. I recommend PyChess.

Stockfish, in recent years, has topped the list of strongest chess engines ever developed. But it can be used by weak players as well, like myself, to learn and analyze or just to have fun playing a game. PyChess, which I keep recommending, allows you to tone down Stockfish's default capability to bludgeon you to death with chess logic. :)

What is this GitHub Repository?

The purpose of this repository is to store all the bits and pieces needed to build and package this application for various RPM flavors of Linux. The binary (installable and runnable) packages are then built via the Fedora Project's COPR build system.

I store all my contributions here needed to enable building and packaging Stockfish. Upstream code—for example, Stockfish-sf_14.tar.gz—will not be redundantly stored here. Those can be found ... upstream. If you know your way around building RPMs, you will know how to work with the specfile and other contributions found here.

tl;dr . . .

I just want to install Stockfish and play chess!

[Fedora and CentOS]

Prep . . .

sudo dnf install -y dnf-plugins-core distribution-gpg-keys
sudo dnf copr enable taw/stockfish

Install . . .

# pychess is simply a linux chess frontend that I personally recommend
sudo dnf install -y stockfish pychess --refresh

I installed it, now I want to play a game!

1. Open PyChess via your application menus.
2. Select a color for yourself and select Stockfish as your opponent
3. Play chess!

More about . . .

• Stockfish — the Stockfish home website:https://stockfishchess.org/
  sudo dnf copr enable taw/stockfish
sudo dnf install stockfish --refresh -y
• PyChess — an excellent open-source feature-full chess frontend that can use Stockfish — recommend.
  sudo dnf install pychess --refresh -y
  Or install my build of Pychess (Fedora only!):
  sudo dnf copr enable taw/pychess
sudo dnf install pychess --refresh -y
• Gnome Chess — another great open-source chess frontend that can use Stockfish. It has a particularly clean interface, but is a bit less versatile as compared to PyChess. Also, Gnome Chess is available for OpenSUSE Tumbleweed whereas PyChess is not.
  sudo dnf install gnome-chess --refresh -y
• GNU Chess — another chess engine that often is installed on Linux systems. It's not anywhere close to being as strong as Stockfish, but it's still stronger than you are at chess.
  sudo dnf install gnuchess --refresh -y
• LiChess.org — open-source and modern online chess. This is, IMHO, the best chess server out there. It's web interface is spectacular. It does not plug into the various desktop clients though (to avoid cheaters using chess hinting, etc). Some mobile applications plug in though.
• Free Internet Chess Server (FICS) — One of the oldest and most popular chess servers. The web interface is awful and all play is done through an external client. Its default client is a Java Applet though, but since Java Applets are a thing of the past, setting up and managing your account is challenging to say the least. Once your account is set up, though, some clients, like PyChess, plug right in.
• Other open-source chess engines that work on Linux and seem to still be getting some development love: Lc0 (Leela Chess Zero), GNU Chess, Fire, Maia Chess, and PyChess itself supplies its own chess engine.

Disclaimer

Stockfish already ships with Fedora and most other Linux distributions, but those vendor-supplied versions—in particular, RedHat/IBM/Fedora versions—are often woefully out of date. Therefore, I offer this build for your own convenience. I make no guarantee that it works as it should. Buyer beware. :) I am in no way affiliated with the developers of Stockfish, but I do thank them and the larger Stockfish community who have made an incredible chess engine possible.

Remember, you don't stand a chance in beating the dated version of Stockfish let alone this newer one, but the gameplay improves regardless. I.e., You don't need this build, but I provide it anyway. Buyer beware. :)

Questions or comments . . .

Contact: t0dd_at_protonmail.com or find me at @t0dd:matrix.org in the Matrix social medias.