Quake in 2026
Quake is thirty years old and somehow more alive on Linux than it's ever been. The QuakeWorld servers are still humming, Team Fortress — the mod that invented the class-based shooter — is being actively remastered, and the whole thing runs beautifully on Fedora. This is how I set it up in 2026.
Getting the game files
Everything below is an engine or a client. They all need the original Quake data — the id1 folder with its pak0.pak and pak1.pak. The easiest legit source is buying Quake on Steam, which drops the classic files at ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Quake. Point every client at that folder and you're set.
ezQuake: modern QuakeWorld
ezQuake is the client for QuakeWorld — the fast, multiplayer-focused branch of Quake. It brings a modern renderer (FXAA, configurable world textures), fully customizable HUDs and crosshairs, a server browser, demo recording, and all the quality-of-life the 1996 build never had. Grab it from Flathub:
flatpak install flathub io.github.ezQuake
Then feed it your Quake data by copying the PAKs into its sandboxed id1:
cp ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Quake/id1/PAK* \
~/.var/app/io.github.ezQuake/.ezquake/id1/
I also drop a couple of symlinks so I'm not typing those paths for the rest of my life:
ln -s ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Quake ~/quake
ln -s ~/.var/app/io.github.ezQuake ~/ezquake
Launch it, hit the server browser, and you're in.
DarkPlaces: the single-player glow-up
For the original campaign I reach for DarkPlaces instead — a beefed-up engine with real-time lighting, higher resolutions, and texture-pack support that makes 1996 look shockingly good. It's packaged right in Fedora (under the Xonotic project):
sudo dnf install darkplaces
darkplaces-sdl -basedir ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Quake
ezQuake for fragging online, DarkPlaces for atmospheric single-player — between the two, every way you'd want to play the base game is covered.
QuakeWorld is still alive
This is the part that genuinely surprises people: QuakeWorld has a living community in 2026. quake.world is the non-profit hub that keeps it going, and the QuakeWorld Hub tracks players and active servers. The netcode John Carmack rewrote for internet play in 1996 is still doing its job — pick a server in ezQuake and there will be people to frag.
Team Fortress: where the class shooter was born
Before there was Overwatch, before TF2, before any of it, there was Quake Team Fortress (1996) — a mod that introduced nine distinct classes (Scout, Sniper, Soldier, Demoman, Medic, Pyro, Spy, Engineer, and the Heavy Weapons Guy) and objective-based team play. The whole lineage — QTF → Team Fortress Classic → Team Fortress 2 — starts here.
The community never let it die. FortressOne is a free, open-source fork of QuakeWorld Team Fortress, remastered for modern systems, and interest surged again when the classic Threewave CTF made its comeback at QuakeCon. The class-based, movement-heavy, grenade-juggling gameplay holds up remarkably well.
Running your own server
If you want a private match — or to test a mod — you host it yourself. The QW-Group stack is the standard:
- mvdsv — the QuakeWorld server daemon (with MVD demo recording built in)
- ktx — the game-logic mod that most modern QW servers run
For Team Fortress specifically, FortressOne ships its own server progs so you can stand up a fortress server of your own.
Modding: compiling QuakeC
Quake's game logic lives in QuakeC (.qc), compiled down to a progs.dat the engine loads at runtime — which is exactly how mods like Team Fortress were built in the first place. The modern toolchain runs entirely on Linux: FTEQW ships a capable QuakeC compiler, and you can iterate on logic, recompile, and reload without ever leaving your terminal. If you grew up wondering how those mods worked, cracking open the .qc and rebuilding it is a genuinely fun rabbit hole.
A few history reads worth your time
While you wait for a map to load, some of the best writing on how any of this worked:
- How quake.exe got its TCP/IP stack — Fabien Sanglard on the wild "chunnel" hack that gave Quake internet play
- Carmack's QuakeWorld .plan log — the rewrite as it happened, in his own words
- Threading the Needle: The Making of Quake Team Fortress — how a handful of Aussies invented the class shooter
And when you're ready to fill your drive with 25 years of community maps, Quaddicted is the archive.
Wrapping up
Thirty years on, Quake isn't just playable on Linux — it's thriving there. A modern client, a gorgeous single-player engine, a live multiplayer scene, the original class shooter under active development, and a modding pipeline that fits in a terminal. Not bad for a game older than most of the people I frag online.
AI icon by Flaticon.