I think it would be a very good decision to include nbsdgames by default in Debian. It has been fine-tuned for years and tested by many people and serves an important purpose, for which I don't know of any more suitable alternatives. Specially given that Debian is probably the main distro on i386 by now and this would be a good use of i386. The following is from the repo's mail.txt:
First of all, thanks for reading and sorry if this email reaches you multiple times. This 2-minutes read is about the zero-cost but influential and significantly beneficial decision to include the 93.7 kB package of nbsdgames (which are 21 games with a lot of variety, creativity, endless gameplay and a menu icon) as default games on your distro (maybe alongside or instead of the other games you include, if you already do). Here are some reasons for doing so (arguably it is much more important than the important calculator app you probably already include) along with answers to common questions that might arise: * These are good brain exercise (which is one of the most important and beneficial kinds of exercise) also good for keeping focus when listening to something or thinking (you can look up the psychological concepts of arousal and stimming). * Science and experience have shown that such endless, simple games are great and important help for preventing and dealing with trauma, depression etc. For example you can look at: https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2026-02-19-study-shows-digital-treatment-tetris-gameplay-can-dramatically-reduce-trauma * The way any user would feel about any product including your OS, is very dependent on the first impression it makes. Technical problems, skill issues and learning curves are also very common, even if your distro is one of the easier ones. If you include games in your OS, their first impression would be "dozens of cool stuff, followed by one or two problems" however if you don't include games the first impression would be almost entirely made of the problems and difficulties they would face and they would not like and talk positively about your OS (similar to the way many people feel about vim because they couldn't manage to exit it the first time) * It is something exotic that Windows doesn't have and your users can show their not-techy-yet friends to evoke their interest. * The games are liked by European scientists! * Its cost is a fraction of a megabyte, less than a wallpaper, its benefit is many hours of positive user experience for many people who try your distro. * I have seen a lot of users (including programmers) avoid getting deep into Linux because they fear the command-line, and they don't learn the command-line because they don't begin to use it. Terminal games make them begin to use the Terminal and make the impression that the Terminal is cool, easy and usable. * A lot of users try OSes on VMs. A lot of people dual-boot OSes with Windows. I have seen that default games give them motivation to boot the OS more than once, play the games and also see and try other things there. * Sometimes people don't know everything about every advantage of Linux yet and are just trying Linux or your distro to see if it is interesting. I would prefer to give them something interesting, instead of sending them back uninterested after 10 minutes. * These can motivate non-techy people to install Linux on their old PCs so children could play and tinker with them (it did happen back when Windows included games) few years later those children could be benefiting you and others because it made them try Linux more. * As I said, technical problems are common. A lot of them are significant annoyances (network problems, dual-boot difficulties) that last many hours for the users and could make them give up. Games are good mental rests that make it go easy. People in NetBSD made a good choice when they put a tetris game in their /rescue directory. * Minimal programs like this are good at propagating the Unix philosophy, "KISS", and the important reality that one small program might do a job better than many much bigger inefficient programs. If I were to show how Free Software managed to perform better than commercial products, I would begin with introducing such concepts. FAQ: + Why Windows and phone vendors stopped shipping games? - The games on old phones and old Windows versions were popular however since their "new looking" games started becoming too heavy they stopped being justifiable (the latest minesweeper is like 100 MB, not to mention other games). They also make money from their spyware social media apps and other stuff that compete with games over the user's boredom and attention. They also needed to pay their game developers, unlike the free and open source nbsdgames. + Not many people asked us for games. - Supply often precedes demand. Nobody asks an empty store to give them the stuff they need. Most inventions were probably not asked for. Same applies here. + People can install games themselves. - Default applications (like your default browser, default office suite, bluetooth wizard and other stuff) exist because the user can't predict and prepare exactly everything they would need later on, and they wouldn't have the time and energy to search and compare every possible choice at the second they need something. Good defaults are a significant help everywhere. + Nobody would like text-based games. - That is a baseless assumption. Some people assume that everyone would scream and run upon seeing anything that has not had a marketing budget. Most people who don't play nbsdgames have simply not heard of it, many millions of people are fans of the genres it includes (checkers, sudoku, arcade games, etc.) and I see many thousands of people liking nbsdgames of which you can see hundreds in the Github (some said they love it or like it very much or that it is very cool in the emails) and I hardly see anyone "disliking" them after trying. Almost anyone I saw would like one, two, five or six or all the games in there. That is the good thing about variety. + We already have games. - The cute little nbsdgames could be a good friend for them. It also has much less size and far more varied gameplay and more colorful looks than the default games I have seen anywhere. It is also important to note that games are there to entertain people, and some packages aren't good at the purpose they should serve. For example they include very few games with very repetitive gameplay that are not interesting for more than minutes, not being "easy to learn and hard to master". For instance I like sgt-puzzles because the package is open-source however it is too gray and entirely slow-paced and I couldn't figure out how to play most of them back when I was bored enough to try them out. However nbsdgames has fast-paced games, slow-paced games, easy games, hard games, puzzle games, focus games, so on. When you get tired of one game you can play all the others. I hope you realize that I make this points because it is a good package not because it is my package (same applies to the person who sent you this text). I did it because I thought it is a good thing to do and it seems that it is so. If you decide to poll your community, it would be good to show them this text too, so they know what they are talking about. Thanks for reading. I wish you continued success and good reasoning.
