Ubuntu has a few offline games out-of-the-box. Now, the developer team is going to remove them from the installer in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.
Since Ubuntu 23.10, Ubuntu Desktop no longer provides ‘Minimal installation‘ option in the installer. Instead, it’s “re-named” to “Default installation” with just the essentials, web browser and basic utilities. User can choose “Full installation” option for the office, media player, games, and other app packages that’s previously installed by default in old Ubuntu releases.
Just a few days ago, the desktop team proposed to remove the games from full installation, then made the decision with wider support.
Meaning that the game packages may be completely removed from the iso image, though they are still available to install in Ubuntu Software (App Center).
The games include:
- Aisleriot Solitaire – a rule-based solitaire card engine that allows many different games to be played.
- Mahjongg – a matching game played with Mahjongg tiles
- Mines – clear explosive mines off the board.
- Sudoku – the popular Japanese logic puzzle
I’ve never played the games, though they are available by default, until I saw the proposition in Ubuntu Discourse. And, remove them can save a few dozen MB disk space in my case in Ubuntu 22.04.
If you like the games, they can be easily installed back either by searching from App Center one by one:
or by running command in a terminal window (press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal):
sudo apt install aisleriot gnome-mahjongg gnome-mines gnome-sudoku
I prefer minimal installs. Otherwise I spend more time removing software I don’t want then installing software I do want. I only install one game, Kpat, which is much superior to Aisle Riot. I see this as a great change.