I started playing Rogue using PocketRogue for the palm pilot. I had played Nethack long before and it was too hard, and the complexity overwhelming. Rogue was much simpler, so I decided to learn that before starting into Nethack again.
Before long I wanted to play the original Rogue on my PC. I downloaded some source and fixed it up to compile on my system, Debian GNU/Linux ("sid"). Known problems with this patch: After hitting ? to view help, the screen doesn't redraw properly.