Any New Emulators Coming For Linux?

[joelandsonja]

After moving to Ubuntu the last few months I have come to the conclusion that Linux is lacking when it comes to Gaming Emulation.

When I was on Windows I had a ton of selections when it came to emulators, but sadly this seems to be a shortcoming to the Linux distributions. I want to stay as positive as possible, in the hopes that some kind and generous programmer(s) will donate their time into the release or some much needed Linux Emulators ... that way I can get back to playing some of my old systems!

So far the only real emulator that has actually worked for me on Linux is Zsnes ... which came as a big surprise to me because I hated using Zsnes on Windows!

Seriously though, I gotta ask ... Why are all of the Emulators on Linux in such poor quality? I realize it's difficult to develop these emulators, but I hate the fact that most of them are riddled with endless configurations that never seem to work.

I can't help feeling as though I'm the only one that appreciates a clean looking, simple, emulator ...

At any rate, are there any rumours of some decent emulators in the works?

Also, would someone be able to send me an easy configuration guide for 'GMAMEUI' so I can try to get some of my games to work ... or do I need to first get myself a University Degree in order to figure out how that blasted system works?!

[MikeTbob]

This has been hashed over a great many times and I hardly feel the need to explain it in detail but sometimes it's better and makes more sense to use Windows for most of your gaming rather than trying to use a compatibility layer or an emulator on Linux. I have never felt that Wine or DosBox have poor quality to them, maybe the Devs feel it's more important to focus on the software actually working rather than worrying about what it looks like but this is just a guess.

I can't help with the GMAMEUI, I have no clue what that is, sorry.

[joelandsonja]

Thanks for the reply!

Although I would rather not install Windows on my system, or support them in any way.

I have heard that suggestion from many people, which makes me sad to think that many have given up on solid emulation for Linux ...

[MikeTbob]

I haven't given up on Wine or DosBox, these both have their places in the Linux world and I use them myself from time to time but some games just do not work with Wine and they probably never will. Trust me, I know what you mean when you say you would rather not install Windows, I don't use it myself but if there are games that you paid for,,,,you should get your moneys worth out of them by using them.

[joelandsonja]

True, but thankfully most of the games I have are emulators so I already got my moneys worth!

I'm sure it is just a setting that I need, but I'm not entirely sure.

Has anyone else had experience with their emulators lagging their games?

If so, how did you manage to fix it?

[MikeTbob]

If so, how did you manage to fix it?

I just bought a new machine but that isn't always a viable option.

[joelandsonja]

That's the wierd thing, we just bought a new system, so you'd think it would be capable of handling this operation ...

[bigtomrodney]

I use Vice64 for my C64 emulation, ZSNES for SNES, DGens for Megadrive/Genesis and I've had Amiga, Atari 2600, NES and DOS emulation work perfectly directly from the repositories. Do you have our graphics card configured correctly? If you didn't have proper OpenGL support that could be a problem as a few of the emulators rely on that.

Also for things like Playstation 1/2 emulation you would need to find your own BIOS files as it is illegal to distribute them.

[elija]

At the end of the day, if you want to run Windows software then Windows is going to be the best thing to run it on. Although DOSBox and Wine are great for older games.

[Djarum]

Thankfully, World of Warcraft works well in WINE. I think that this was partly due to native OpenGL within the game for the mac users, and that it did in fact have a Linux client during beta.

I believe that given this game's popularity, it has helped get some Linux exposure to the gaming world, probably more exposure than any other game. Though I don't play the game any longer, I get some much better performance from it on Linux than I ever did on windows. Except I could never get full duplex over Ventrilo.