Halo fans probably know this better than anyone, but for those of you who are in the dark, this is for you.  The Marathon Trilogy was a suite of first-person shooters developed for the classic Macintosh in the mid-90s by Bungie Software.  Mrathon 2 would later see a release for Windows 95, but other than that, the series became the flagship first-person shooter franchise for Macintosh.  The first Marathon, released in 1994, was the first first-person shooter to offer modifiable physics and dual-wield weapons and alternate shots.  While breaking a lot of new ground, the game itself is undeniably a timepiece, or benchmark example if you will, of the mid-90s pre-Quake era.

The version that is now available for Linux (and Mac and Windows) offers a lot more spice than the original release, including support for high-res textures, and high resolutions.  In Linux, the game makes available all of the resolutions Xorg believes that your monitor is capable of.  That includes Xinerama…  Here are a couple of shots showing Marathon with no effects ala’ the original, and one maxed out.  Very significant difference.

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No effects. Click to expand.

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[one_half last="yes"]

All the bells and whistles. Click to expand.

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All three games use the Aleph One engine.  Installation is easy for any Linux distribution if you want to build it from source, but there is no need for that if you’re using Ubuntu.

First we must add the Playdeb repository.  There are 2 ways to do it.  You can simply install this .deb file, which will configure the repository for you by clicking on the link below.

[button color="green" link="http://archive.getdeb.net/install_deb/playdeb_0.3-1~getdeb1_all.deb" target=""]Click here to configure PlayDeb archives[/button]

Alternatively, you can configure the archives like so;

1.) Open up the Ubuntu Software Center.  Add the follow software source:

deb http://archive.getdeb.net/ubuntu oneiric-getdeb games

2.) Now, let’s add the repo’s GPG key.

wget -q -O- http://archive.getdeb.net/getdeb-archive.key | sudo apt-key add -

The rest is super easy.  Just use the buttons below to install each game.

[one_half last="no"][button color="green" link="apt://marathon" target=""]Install Marathon[/button]

[button color="green" link="apt://marathon2" target=""]Install Marathon 2[/button]

[button color="green" link="apt://marathon-infinity" target=""]Install Marathon Infinity[/button][/one_half]

[one_half last="yes"][/one_half]

Or, you could do it the super easy way.

sudo apt-get install marathon*