One of the free software projects we have been talking to as of late about better enhancing their benchmarking capabilities for likely integration into the Phoronix Test Suite is Rigs of Rods.

When I've seen gaming rigs (actual rigs, not the big budget magazine stuff), I usually find a powerful CPU and GPU with everything else being of average spec: on board sound, on board networking, average case (apart from see-through windows and a dozen fans) and a single modern SATA hard drive.

Phun, a free open-source, cross-platform 2D physics simulator, makes you want to pick up blocks, or maybe crayons, and learn more about the way things fall and move under pressure.

Step is a physics simulator for KDE 4. It’s meant to be an educational tool, but I’ve found it to be fun just to play around with also. Step was written as a Google Summer of Code project for KDE by Vladimir Kuznetsov.

We build a lot of big rigs here at ExtremeTech. Whether it's ExtremeTech Killer Gaming Rig, our latest Home Theater PC, with its massive 750GB hard drive or even the $800 Gaming PC, our systems lean towards high horsepower CPUs and GPUs.

DigiBand is a full home version Drumming/Guitar simulator. It isn’t just intended to be a simulator, but a uniquely refreshing new experience. It is much different than simulators already out there.

I maintain that computers are the hot rods of the 21st century, and changing up your desktop background is the first and easiest step to pimping your ride. Today I thought I’d share my favourites.

Glest is a popular Free software RTS. After development of the project subsided, two community forks appeared and have been on divergent paths. Now it seems there is potential for a merger to drive on and become the final successor to the Glest project.

Glest is a very good real time strategy game. It is free and works on Linux!