Web based services that fully implement and enforce rules for their games
Boardgamearena - the best selection in this category by far. These days games are added much faster than normal players will be able to keep up with so there is always plenty to explore. Very large player base, for popular games you will find matches quickly. Good match-making and lots of play modes: real-time, turn-based (with customizable time allowances), Arena, Tournaments. Generally high quality implementations that tend to stay visually true to the physical version of the game. Many games have good tutorials. The premium subscription is not strictly required but an excellent value if you use the site a lot. BGA has been invaluable in my boardgame journey. It has allowed me to learn and try hundreds of games and I must have bought at least 50 physical games based primarily on my BGA experience. Too many favorites to list.
Yucata.de - moves slower but over the years it has built up a decent repertoire and it has some real gems that you won’t find elsewhere. Primarily for turn-based play (unless you find a group of people who commits to quick turns). The UI is a bit quirky but after getting used to it I like a lot of things about it. In my opinion Yucata has the best undo and replay/review implementation out there. My favorites here are Grand Austria Hotel, Newton, Mottainai, Taverns of Tiefenthal, Lorenzo Il Magnifico. Rajas of the Ganges (and Rajas Dice), Targi, Fields of Arle. Yucata has “sold” me a bunch of games too.
triqqy.com, happymeeple.com, brettspielwelt.de, rally-the-troops.com, boiteajeux.net, warchestonline.com are some other sites that I visit for specific games. These have smaller player bases but worth checking out to see if they have one of your favorites.
Virtual tabletops that don’t enforce the rules
Tabletop Simulator is a desktop app that’s available for purchase on Steam. As the name suggests this is a physics based 3d tabletop that allows you to play a huge number of games thanks to a passionate community that implements and provides these via the Steam workshop. You will find just about everything here. The main downside (to some) is that game rules are not implemented or enforced. It’s primarily a 3d simulation of the phyisical components. Many games implement some level of assistance using the built-in Lua support, for example they might automate setup or have a button for end-of-round cleanup. But generally it’s up to the players to follow and enforce the rules of the game. I don’t play a lot on TTS but I use it all the time to get a feel for a game or its components.
Tabletopia is a web-based alternative to TTS with the same caveats. Smaller selection of games and less flexible UI, smaller (and less involved) community. Some games can be played for free, others require a subscription.
virtualtabletop.io - is an open-source reimplementation of playingcards.io. You can think of it as a 2d version of TTS. I like this approach a lot, especially for card games or abstract stuff where the physics simulation and fancy graphics wouldn’t add much. Relatively small but passionate community.
Vassal engine - a Java based open-source desktop app. Lots of modules and a passionate community. Worth checking out especially if you are into wargaming.
Apps that fully implement the rules
There are a lot of apps out there, some for mobile, some for desktop (many available on Steam). Most require a purchase. The quality of implementations vary greatly. Some support online multiplayer, some don’t or there is no playerbase. Some have nice snappy implementations, others have very poor UIs or go the other extreme and create an overly fancy UI that is too removed from the physical game. This is generally my least favorite option, I will almost always prefer a good BGA or Yucata implementation over an app. There are a few exceptions: Ascension, One Deck Dungeon, Onirim, Sagrada and Paperback are some where I like the app version a lot.
You forgot Tabletop Playground. It’s a much better implementation than TTS, but sadly doesn’t have anywhere near the same number of players currently. It does have a large number of community mods though, with most popular games already implemented. It’s also great in VR.
Ah well, I’ve used Virtualbox, Vmware and KVM and I found them all useful for my purposes. Vmware is very slick and has an edge on easy Gfx acceleration for Windows guests but since they’re now owned by Broadcom that might become a problem.
I’m happy with Virtualbox on my desktop and KVM on a few servers. I don’t really care to take sides.
It’s really just Debian with more packages preinstalled, but yeah, the idea is that you have an OS that has the primary purpose of virtualizing other machines.
A bare metal OS is an OS running outside of a hypervisor. Virt-manager is a class 1 hypervisor that allows you to host guest operating systems. ( Run vms )
Technically no, both use kvm virtualization which is included in the Linux kernal, so both are “bare metal hypervisors” other wise know as class 1 hypervisors. Distinctions can be confusing 😂
TL;DR: use what is in the kernel, without strange out of tree kernel modules like for VirtualBox, and use KVM, i.e. on fedora virt-manager qemu qemu-kvm
Virtual manager is a application that connects to libvirtd in the back end. Think of it as a web browser or file manager for VMs.
Proxmox VE is an entire OS built for virtualization on dedicated servers. It also has support for clusters and live VM migrations between hosts. It is in essence a server OS designed to run in a data center (or homelab) of some kind. If is sort of equivalent to vSphere but they charge you per CPU socket for enterprise support and stability
Well this thread clearly established that I neither have technical knowledge and I don’t pay attention to spelling…
Jokes aside this is a good explanation. I have seen admins using vSphere and it kind of makes sense. I’m just starting to scratch the surface of homelab, and now started out with a raspberry pie. My dream is a full fledged self sustaining homelab.
What kind of headaches are you having? I’ve been running two completely different machines in a cluster with a pi as a Qdevice to keep quorum and it’s been incredibly stable for years.
OpenZFS is not GPL compatible so it can never be baked into the kernel in the same way BTRFS can. I’ve run into issues where I’ve needed to downgrade the kernel but if I do the system won’t boot.
Btrfs also doesn’t need any special software to work as it is completely native and baked in.
Is there an equivalent or something similar to “Use host i/o cache” that VirtualBox have? Last time I tried virt-manager the install time of the vm was incredibly slow because of the terrible write speed to my hdd. Vbox fixes that issue with the host i/o cache setting.
Usually setting the cache mode to “none” gives the best performance, assuming you’re using the virtio interface, instead of SATA/SCSI. This is a common mistake most newbies make when installing Windows, because virt-manager defaults to the latter, which gives poor perfomance. The same goes for the network btw, you’d want to use the virtio network interface instead of the emulated NIC. So before you install a Windows guest, make sure you change both those interfaces.
After changing the hardware interfaces, what you’d need to do (with Windows guests) is you’d need to supply the [virtio drivers](github.com/virtio-win/…/README.md, which you’ll need to provided to the Windows setup (via the virtio driver ISO) when prompted.
But if you’ve already installed Windows, you’ll need to install all the virtio drivers first and then update the interfaces after you’ve powered off the VM.
And in case you were wondering, this isn’t an issue with Linux guests, since virt-manager defaults to virtio hardware, and drivers aren’t an issue either.
Brings back memories of running “The Upper Room BBS” and “007 BBS” as a teenager in the late 80’s as a SYSOP. Those were fond memories, of having someone dial into your computer and making online friends from across the country sometimes.
I think now though, you can just Telnet into different BBS’s still.
Those instructions are from the official docs, and install.sh comes from the source repo. It’s an annoying script (it basically runs apt, npm, make, on your behalf…thanks, I can do that myself), but if you’re trusting the repo source to begin with, I don’t think it’s any less secure.
Looks like a pretty straightforward install! And a fun project to have a personal message space with friends. It includes the ability to launch gameoso you could maybe set it up as a personal lobby for gaming buddies.
I really wish more people knew about and played Tabletop Playground. It’s much better than Tabletop Simulator imho. It just needs a marketing push to get the players.
My friend group uses tabletop simulator for card games. I’ve found the way you can interact with the environment in TTS very intuitive, even over dedicated digital versions of certain genres. It only becomes cumbersome if someone has no idea what the rules are and there is no rule enforcement.
My friend group discovered BGA during the pandemic and frankly we haven’t had any reason to look for an alternative yet. One of us has a premium account and we split the costs, so it’s a very fair price for the value.
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