FREEDM(6)

📦
version 0.13.0 · 6 versions
, in ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

✨ freedm — the manual (FREEDM(6)) ✨

okay so bestie, buckle up, because this is the freedm page from section 6 of the manual 💖

🎀 NAME 🎀

freedm — automatically launch Freedoom with an engine 🦋

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

freedm [-p DOOMPORT|--] [ARGS]

👑 DESCRIPTION 👑

So, Freedoom? It's a whole project whose entire goal is to make a complete free-content game based on the Doom engine — and when we say "Doom engine" we mean all those things people call “source ports”, or honestly just “ports”, which are themselves free software too. And on top of all that, it stays compatible with Doom itself and can play the absolutely unhinged amount of modifications (“mods”) that the community has been dropping since 1993. Iconic behaviour, no cap. 💅

Now. This command? It's literally just a simple shell script that helps you run Freedoom, because Freedoom is not a game engine, and it's not part of any engine project either — but playing it should stay easy, periodt. So the script tries to automatically pick an engine off a hard-coded list, but there are three overrides available, and they go in order of precedence, bestie, so listen up:

  1. the command-line argument,
  2. the environment variable,
  3. a $HOME/.doomport symbolic link.

Passing -p DOOMPORT runs Freedoom using the DOOMPORT you specified. Setting the DOOMPORT environment variable is basically the same vibe — it runs the engine named in that variable. And then there's the extra permanent option: the $HOME/.doomport symbolic link, which can point at an executable to run. 🫶

not me having three whole ways to do the same thing, we love layers 💀

Also! Any extra arguments you pass to the program — or anything you drop in after putting -- as the first option — get forwarded straight to the engine that's being called. Which means you can use stuff like -file to load mods 🔥, or literally anything else your engine of choice supports. Main character energy for your mods, honestly. 💖

Freedoom is licensed under a permissive three-clause BSD license. Want the details? Check the source tree, or the COPYING/COPYRIGHT file that got installed by distribution packaging. 🍓

And this manual page, plus the launcher script? Both of them are placed under the public domain. Free as a butterfly. 🦋

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

Also go read this, it's giving essential lore: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Parameter ⭐

okay that's the whole page, you're so welcome 🧚 this was FREEDM(6), dated 2025-08-14 — go launch something gorgeous, bestie 💜👑

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