Linux Flight Simulators
FlightGear
FlightGear is a free open source flight simulator that aims to provide a realistic flight simulation platform that is developed by many talented people from around the world.
FlightGear requires at least 8GB of RAM and a dedicated graphics card to run if you are going to use the higher detail settings, however, it can run with lower settings on slower hardware.
The following wiki page covers some of the topics related to hardware and settings for use on various systems: Wiki FlightGear
Although FlightGear is in the standard repositories on ubuntu and Linux Mint. The repositories generally offer a much older version of the software. To get the latest software, it is recommended to use the following command to install the software to your Linux system:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:saiarcot895/flightgear
sudo apt update
sudo install flightgear
Full details relating to this PPA can be found at the following location: FlightGear Wiki
FlightGear main Menu
From the main menu screen, you can install and select which aircraft to fly and also the location you wish to fly from. There are hundreds of different aircraft to choose from.
Flight Gear Cessna 182 Cockpit View
Video Clip of a Cessna Citation X running on FlightGear
X-Plane
X-Plane is a fully featured Flight Simulator that can run on Linux. I have verified this on both Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and Linux Mint 20 Cinnamon Edition.
What is X-Plane
X-Plane is a flight simulation engine series developed and published by Laminar Research. Commercial desktop versions are sold for macOS, Windows, and Linux. Although X-Plane is a paid for Flight Simulator, it does have a fully featured demo version that can be downloaded.
X-Plane can be download directly from the following link: Try X-Plane
Note, X-Plane is a very feature rich simulator and requires a lot of resource to run smoothly. It is recommended that the following minimum specification is available:
Processor: Intel Core i5 6600K at 3.5 ghz or faster.
Memory: 16 GB RAM.
Graphics: NVIDIA or AMD Video card with at least 4GB VRAM.
Network: Broadband Internet connection.
Storage: 65 GB available space.
Sound Card: Default.
The specification I have used for X-Plane 11 on my Linux Mint system is as below:
When you download, you will get a zip package which you will need to extract the installer from. The installer is a single file called : "X-Plane 11 Installer Linux".
When you run the installer, you will be presented with a menu screen providing the instructions for installing the demo.
Once you have downloaded and installed the demo, you will be presented with a screen similar to the one below. (Note version displayed is a full version)
