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Eh, some of these URLs might not be right since they're from memory, but my recommendations would be:

First, I second Starscape, Gish, and Fate, they're all good.

And some new ones:

Alien Shooter http://www.sigma-team.net/ - The most incredible isometric shooter ever made.
Star Monkey http://www.smallrockets.com/ - A great (though very short) vertical scrolling shooter. Ultra Assualt, from the same company, is also very good, and longer. I just prefer Star Monkey for some reason.
Zombie Smashers X2 http://zsx2.totallyscrewed.net/ - The most incredible side-scrolling beat-em-up ever made.
Lux http://www.sillysoft.com/ - An excellent online or offline Risk game, which allows the Risk ruleset to be applied to user created maps, and also allows for large scale scenarios which would be extremely difficult using a traditional board. Has a good following, and some excellent map makers.
Demonstar: Secret Missions 1 http://www.mking.com/ - The best of the 3 Demonstar games (SM2 is also good). A good vertical scrolling shooter blatantly inspired by the Raiden arcade series. I've been hoping for a modernized sequel (either higher-res sprites or polygonned), but I think Mountain King has sort of stopped making games.

And, the best for last:

Jets n' Guns http://www.rakeingrass.com/ - The greatest shooter of any kind since Tyrian, and arguably better than Tyrian.

If you're interested in some of these, I'd recommend Jets n' Guns first, then Starscape, then Zombie Smashers X2, then Alien Shooter, and definitely Lux if you like Risk.

Speaking of which, see Blitz 3D's community of developers, many of whom are very keen to port to Linux, especially if it's just a recompile away. Cue Blitz Max (an OO-enhanced version of the current Blitz language), set to come to Linux and OS X later in the year.

Amateur Blitz developers have produced stuff like this, a lot of which puts most existing Linux games to shame (OK, so Frozen Bubble can live)...

• Platypus
• Best Friends
• Juno Remix
• Cletus Clay
• Rocket Boards

GarageGames seems to be having a bad time of it.

If you want to have a look at what the shareware gameing world is up to you could try some of the others doing great games.

Dexterity
Mountain King Games
Retro64
Phelios

In fact, too many to list. All of those sites have links to others. You could spend days following them all.

Or you could try some of the new emerging quality shareware game news/review sites.

Diygames
Bytten
Shareware Gaming Magazine
GameTunnel

Galactix was written by Mountain King Studios who also did Raptor (released as an Apogee game) and a few others.

Galactix was written by Mountain King Studios who also did Raptor (released as an Apogee game) and a few others.

Interesting point, but I really doubt that this is aimed at the general consumer. It's for Joe Linux, who prides himself on doing nifty tech things with Linux.

Okay, Tux Racer may not be the most amazing thing in the world, but it's fun for a couple hours.

Freeciv...why is freeciv bad? You don't like civilization? There are some differences, but aside from the fact that civ had more artists (and, IMHO, a worse interface) and is a bit easier to use, not huge difference in fun factor.

Lets consider some others:

zangband/ToME/angband/nethack/etc: These *are* a lot of fun. Diablo has much more simplistic, boring gameplay, and it took off all over. Most variants have a pretty simple text or 2d graphics based interface without music, but some are a bit more elaborate. Be a bit of a pain to play on the controller, yes...

Chromium BSU: flashy scrolling shooter. Could use the 3d hardware in the X-box.

Dunno if you can just use ordinary ol' x86 binaries (particularly considering RAM usage), but:

Quake 3 (use the 3d hardware). Not free.

Abuse: This was a *blast* when it came out -- I played it over and over. It's looking a little dated now, but it's still a good game. Free now -- thanks crack.com.

Pingus is apparently shaping up pretty well.

There's part of the amazing Exile series available for Linux. (shareware)

Maelstrom may be too "simple" for you, as it's only an astroids clone, but it was a very well known game on the Mac for a long time, and I still like it.

While I'm not a tremendous fan of Illwinter's Conquest of Elysium II, their Dominions: Priests, Prophets, and Pretenders is a non-flashy but very deep, very good strategy game. Shareware.

There's a DOS-style shooter from Mountain King Studios, Raptor. (shareware)

Finally, there are all the emulators and whatnot...take a look at GNUboy, TuxNES, snes9x, DGen/SDL,
FreeSCI, Sarien, Exult, XU4, ScummVM, Basilisk II, YAE and others.

There are a host of Loki ports that you can't get any more except used. Lots of good stuff from LGames, though I'm not as big a fan of their stuff as some other people are.

Finally, text-based but really, really sophisticated, good, and almost all of them free, there are text-based interactive fiction (Try Tower of Babel before giving up on this...first one I ever beat without cheating, and it's *soooooo* good). The Interactive Fiction Archive has games and players.

Finally, many good games can be played through WINE -- Starcraft, Fallout, Max Payne, Half Life...

These are just some of the games that I enjoy under Linux. There are lots more (admittedly, some of lower quality) available at the SDL Games Page and the Linux Games Tome.

Linux games usually take a bit more (okay, often a lot :-) ) more effort to set up properly. But they're often very customizable, you can actually have an impact on the game design ("This game needs feature X"), and you don't have to leave the comfortable environs of Linux. And the environment is getting better, not worse.

You do know that Raptor now runs on Linux, don't you? It's exactly the same game, rebuilt on top of SDL, which means it runs under X or fullscreen on the framebuffer console. I bought it (again - I have a DOS copy as well!) and it rocks!