Best Free Games for Ubuntu – Open Source, Free to Play and No Catch

A cheerful kart racer with power ups, tracks that keep getting redrawn, and split screen for four players on one machine.

Install this one first if anybody else in the house might want a go. It plays like the kart racers you already know, the handling is forgiving, and four people can share one keyboard and one screen with nothing to set up. The newer tracks look genuinely good now, which was not true a few years back.

Build an ancient civilisation, raise an army and take the map, in a strategy game volunteers have been making for over twenty years.

If you liked the old Age of Empires games this is the closest thing you can install for nothing, and in places it looks better. Towns grow properly, the fights have weight, and the computer will punish you for leaving your farms undefended. It is still being worked on, which shows in the odd rough edge, but it has been good for years.

A huge blocky world you explore, fight through and build in, made entirely by volunteers and updated constantly.

Veloren looks like a voxel game and plays like an adventure. Pick a direction, walk until the landscape changes, and you will find caves and towers worth going into. The world is enormous and it runs comfortably on hardware that would struggle with anything else this size. Playing with a friend is straightforward and the servers are community run.

A blocks and building sandbox you can reshape completely, formerly called Minetest, with hundreds of free add on worlds.

Out of the box Luanti is a plain building game, and that undersells it badly. The real draw is the list of free worlds you can download from inside the game itself, which run from survival to trains to full role playing worlds. It is light on your machine, it works well over a home network, and children take to it immediately.

Note: The project changed its name from Minetest to Luanti in 2024. It is the same software.

Stand your ground while the screen fills with enemies, upgrading every few seconds until something finally gets through.

This is a free standalone game rather than a taster, and a proper one. Runs last about half an hour, you pick an upgrade every time you level, and the moment your character stops being fragile and starts clearing the screen is very satisfying. It looks like an old dungeon crawler and plays beautifully on a laptop trackpad.

Note: There is a larger paid version. You do not need it, and nothing in this one is locked behind it.

Lots of players, a run of daft elimination rounds, and physics that were never meant to be taken seriously.

One person made this in a couple of weeks and gave it away, and it has outlasted most of the games it was copying. It is best with people you know, on a call, all shouting at once. Rounds are short, nobody is ever out for long, and it is one of the few games here that works as a party rather than a hobby.

Turn based fantasy battles on a hex map, with hundreds of free story campaigns written by players over two decades.

You move a small band of units across a map, hold the villages, and try not to lose the ones you have trained. Easy to learn in an afternoon and hard to put down after that. The reason to keep it is the campaign list: people have been writing and sharing stories for this game since 2003 and you download them from the main menu.

Fly a small trading ship around a galaxy, take work where you find it, and slowly build a fleet that can go further.

You start with one ship and almost no money, and nothing tells you what to do. Most people end up hauling cargo between two systems until they can afford something better, and that is exactly the appeal. It is quiet, it is enormous, and there is a full story in there if you go looking. Runs on anything.

The classic Command and Conquer and Red Alert games rebuilt for modern machines, with the rough edges filed off.

This is the one that surprises people. It takes the real time strategy games a lot of us grew up with and fixes what made them awkward, so you can select more than a handful of units and the interface behaves the way you expect. Online matches still fill up, and the tutorial campaigns are a good place to start.

Note: You will be asked to download the original game files on first run. The free versions are offered to you in the installer.

A very fast shooter on small maps, where movement matters more than aim and a match takes ten minutes.

Xonotic is quick in a way modern shooters mostly are not. You move at speed, bounce off walls to go faster, and dying costs you seconds rather than a round. It holds a high frame rate on almost anything, which makes it a good answer for an older laptop, and you can play against the computer offline when the servers are quiet.

A short, funny game about being backstage in a game, where the heist you were promised happens somewhere else without you.

It takes about twenty minutes and it is the best twenty minutes on this page. You never quite get to play the exciting thing, which is the joke, and the voice work carries it completely. Put it on when you have half an hour and want to be in a better mood at the end of it. It has been free since the day it came out.

Five against five, one round to plant or stop a bomb, on maps that have barely changed in twenty years because they did not need to.

Everything you can buy here changes how your gun looks and nothing else, which is why it sits at the top of a free list without an argument. It has a proper Linux version, it starts a match in under a minute, and it is still the game every other shooter gets measured against. Losing is your fault, which is either the appeal or the problem.

Note: We have not put a streaming button on this one. Sending your aim to a server and back adds a delay you will feel, and that matters more here than anywhere else on the page.

Two teams of five, one map, and over a hundred characters who are all available to everyone from the first minute.

Dota gives you the entire game for nothing, including every character, which almost nothing else of its size does. What you can buy is outfits. It is genuinely hard for the first month and there is no way around that, but it runs natively on Linux, it is beautiful in motion, and a good match is unlike anything else. Play the tutorial, then play the computer for a while.

Six against six with Marvel characters, where the roof coming in is part of the plan and every hero plays completely differently.

This is the best looking game on the page by a distance and it is free, which still seems like a mistake. Characters unlock by playing, the paid items are outfits, and matches are short enough to fit in a lunch break. It asks far more of your graphics card than anything else here, so it is one of the few where streaming it is a sensible answer.

Blizzard’s hero shooter, five against five now, with a cast people have been arguing about since 2016.

The reason to try it is how different the heroes feel from one another. A support player and a tank player are having two completely different evenings in the same match, and both matter. Everything in the shop is cosmetic. It went free in 2023 and it runs at Platinum on Linux, which is better than it has any right to.

A game show shooter where the buildings come down around you, so the map you start the round on is not the one you finish it on.

Nothing else plays quite like this. Walls fall, floors give way, and a team that plans around that beats a team with better aim. Everything you can buy is an outfit. It is one of the more demanding games here and it is not in any cloud catalogue we checked, so you will want a reasonably recent graphics card.

Nine very different characters, bright cartoon maps, and a sense of humour that has aged better than most games from 2007.

Free since 2011 and there are still people on the servers every night. The nine characters are properly distinct, so there is one for you whether you want to aim carefully or just hold a corner with a minigun. It runs on hardware you would otherwise throw out. Stick to the servers Valve runs while you are learning.

A fast space ninja game that has been quietly improved every few months since 2013 and now holds several games worth of material.

Everything in Warframe can be earned by playing. Money buys the same things sooner, and honestly some of them take a long time otherwise. Set that aside and it is remarkably generous: the movement is superb, there are open landscapes and a real story, and anybody who bounced off it in 2015 would not recognise it now.

Planes, tanks and warships from the last hundred years, modelled seriously, fighting in the same battles as each other.

The detail is remarkable and none of it costs anything to start. You work up through real vehicles by flying and driving them. Money buys the same vehicles faster, and the higher you climb the more that gap shows, so the sensible way in is to pick one country and one era and stay there. It has a native Linux version and it looks superb.

A striking open world action game with fast, showy fighting and a world that is very good at making you want to see the next bit.

The movement and the combat are the reason to play. You get a full open world and a long story for nothing, and it looks better than it has any right to. Characters are handed out by chance and paying improves your odds, so decide before you start that you are happy playing whoever you get. Most people are.

Note: It needs a Kuro Games account as well as Steam, and the first download is very large.

A stylish city, very fast street level fighting, and one of the best looking free games released in the last year.

This is the newest game on the page and the one most likely to surprise you. The fighting is quick and readable, the city between missions has real character, and it runs at Platinum on Linux with no fiddling. As with the others of its type, characters come by chance and money improves the odds, so treat the roster you get as the game.

Note: Needs a HoYoverse account as well as Steam.

An open world set in tenth century China, where you can be a swordsman, a doctor or a thief, and the countryside is the point.

It is enormous and it is free, and the first hour where you are gliding over mountains is genuinely something. The combat has more to it than it first shows, and there is a lot to do that is not fighting. Paying gets you cosmetics and conveniences rather than power. It asks a fair bit of your machine, which is why it has a streaming button.

A dark game about killing things for better equipment, with a character upgrade board so large it is famous for it.

The whole game is free and always has been. Money buys storage space and outfits, and the storage is the one that genuinely helps after a few weeks. It is deep in a way that takes a season to appreciate, and it gets heavy on your machine late on when the screen fills with effects, which is why streaming earns its place here.

Eight separate Star Wars stories with full voice acting, and you can play all eight without paying anything.

This is the most story you will get for nothing anywhere on this page. Each of the eight classes has its own complete campaign, properly acted, and a free account covers them. What money buys is the later expansions and some conveniences. It is fifteen years old and still being updated, and the smuggler story in particular holds up.

A large shared fantasy world with no monthly fee, where events happen on a timer whether or not anybody turns up.

This has never charged a subscription in fourteen years, which makes it the easiest shared world to recommend to somebody who does not want a bill. A free account covers a very large amount of it. What money buys is the expansions, and you will play a long time before you feel that edge. Fighting a world boss with fifty other people is still one of the best things here.

Note: A free account has some limits on chat and trading, which exist to stop nuisance accounts.

A shared world where players make almost everything in the game, and a proper Linux version rather than a compatibility fix.

A free native shared world is rare and this is a good one. Everything you can wear or wield was made by another player, so the economy is the game. Paying gets you faster progress rather than better gear. Be aware that in much of the map other players can take what you are carrying, which is the point for some people and a dealbreaker for others.

Second World War battles where you lead a small squad of soldiers rather than a single character, with a native Linux build.

You control one soldier and your squad follows, which makes a big battle feel like something you are part of rather than something happening around you. It is one of the very few war shooters with a real Linux version. Paying buys squads and vehicles sooner. Start with the campaigns that give you a full squad rather than the ones that do not.

Make people, build them a house, and watch your carefully planned life fall apart over a kitchen fire.

The base game went free in 2022 and it is the whole base game, not a sample. You can build, you can play a family for years, and most people never buy a single add on. It needs an EA account before it will start, and the packs are advertised inside the game relentlessly, which is the honest catch.

Note: It will ask you to make an EA account and install the EA app the first time you run it. This is normal and it is a one off.