Can anyone tell me what they think is the best free online game for Linux? A big participation rate would be good. Perhaps one of those games where you become a character and wander around a virtual world for years doing stuff and interacting with other players would be cool. Some sort of GUI based game is preferable with perhaps some graphics. I don't play games much, but a little distraction from time to time would be nice.

I like Bzflag

You have to go for the obvious, and try 'runescape' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runescape I play it using firefox 2 (32 bit) with Java installed. If you install the 64bit version of Firefox the java part doesn't work yet.

There is lots to do with a free login, I have been playing for a while and haven't got round to completing many of the free quests yet.

I sometimes have delays when logging in or bringing up the map, but I think this relates to server problems rather than my setup.

Basing myself in what you say, I think you are looking for a 3D persistent fantasy MMORPG. If so, visit http://www.planeshift.it

Savage 2 - A Tortured Soul
http://savage2.s2games.com/

Runescape is fun, especially if you use a IRC client to chat in a swiftirc chat room.

Wesnoth is multiplayer but not a MMORPG.

You best bet is to just search for Linux games, there are tons of them.

Not sure if it is what you are looking for, but Enemy-Territory is a free online FPS. A great place to start is www.happypenguin.org You will find lots of commercial or free/open source games to distract you during your down times.

I intalled bzflag as root in /usr/local/.
When root the game runs fine IF I execute the bzflag binary executable file by cliking on its icon when viewing the files in a GUI.
If I try to execute as root from a terminal it won't run. I get;
[root@myplace bzflag-2.0.8-x86-Opkg]# bzflag
/usr/local/bin/../lib/OBLISK/bzflag-2.0.8/bin/bzflag: error while loading shared libraries: libXau.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

When I switch to another user it will not execute either from the GUI or a terminal. When I try from the GUI by clicking on the executable file, the screen goes into spasms and the user is logged out of the session.
I get the following message when trying from a terminal;
[me@myplace bzflag-2.0.8-x86-Opkg]$ bzflag
/usr/local/bin/../lib/OBLISK/bzflag-2.0.8/bin/bzflag: error while loading shared libraries: libXau.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Any ideas what is going on?
The game is there and works, I just can't quite get to it.

Looks like you need to track down that library. Not sure where the best place to get MDK stuff, or if you are actually still using it, though. Google a bit for libXau and that will likely help.

Thanks, I will look around. It is weird how when I launch as root via GUI it works 100%. Try to launch via another user or as root via command line and it fails.

You should try (Mandrake - Mandriva): urpmi libxorg-x11, or installing that package.

I disagree with uglydot and runnerfrog. I think you may already have the library installed, and the program just can't find it.

Otherwise, how would you have ever been able to run the program at all????

Explain to us what you mean by GUI here. Is this an icon on your desktop? Is it an icon in the file browser, Nautilus(gnome) or Konqueror(kde)? Can you tell us exactly how the GUI runs the command?

May be when it "works 100%" is loading with an "export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=" that may include a library provided by the game package outside the OS path for libs, happens many times.
EDIT: libXau.so.6 is normally included into /usr/lib/

Yeah, I re-read that and realized my advice was dumb. So yeah, listen to them.

I use Nautilus to navigate to the icon that represents the executable file, then I click on it (when root) and the application runs fine.

Football is a pretty good game. Or cricket.