Old question reloaded: Best Linux for emulation?

Anything about Mac emulation that does not belong in the above categories.

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24bit
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Old question reloaded: Best Linux for emulation?

Post by 24bit »

Hi fellows and a happy new year!

I am looking for a GNU/Linux distro for my netbook (Asus Eee PC).
I would like to have a recent build with a comfortable GUI and a decent packet manager having access to a repository including Basilisk II and SheepShaver.
I know Mandriva 2010 had this, maybe because Christian Bauer developed on Mandrake.
Since the near bankrupt of Mandriva I am a bit clueless where to look. I would rather not resolve all that ancient dependencies for the emulators by hand. (Did that some years ago for Suse -no fun at all) To my knowledge neither Ubuntu, Suse or Mageia have the emulators in repository, a shame, by the way!
They do have DOSBox and VirtualBox usually. :(

Any thoughts how to proceed or why the emulators have been dropped from the repositories?

Edit: I wish this thread would have been continued: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1265153
But its way too old to be useful for me. :(
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Re: Old question reloaded: Best Linux for emulation?

Post by adespoton »

No idea why the emulators aren't in the repos anymore -- I always default to Debian, which tends to have pretty much everything in either Free or Non-Free.

Debian Mint is a great way to go for a lightweight Linux OS that does emulators -- MintPPC even runs MacOnLinux!

[edit]
I've also had some success with Arch; I haven't checked to see if SS and BII are still in its repos recently, but there are a number of emulation guys who contribute to that distro.
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Re: Old question reloaded: Best Linux for emulation?

Post by 24bit »

Thanks for the pointer, cant harm to try Mint or maybe Knoppix.
I know the .deb for BII is still available, but the dedendencies are a pain.
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Re: Old question reloaded: Best Linux for emulation?

Post by 24bit »

I forgot to mention that I did try the builds Cat_7 kindly offers with Zorin.
There was no special reason for Zorin, I kind of liked the GUI though.
Anyway BII does not start or comes up with black screen, SS does nothing or shows the config GUI and then quits.
Thats why I was asking for a probably working flavor. :)
I´d better forget about the repos...

Guess I´ll download Mint now.

Edit: Forgot to try BasiliskII_SDL_Linux_13_09_2010.zip with Zorin.
Build is working like a charm, many thanks Cat_7!
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Re: Old question reloaded: Best Linux for emulation?

Post by Cat_7 »

Ah, great!

Can you tell us something about your experiences with Zorin? It seems interesting.

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Re: Old question reloaded: Best Linux for emulation?

Post by 24bit »

Silly me, Cat_7.
I forgot to edit syctl... :oops:
Your SheepShaver_GCC44_SDL_Unix_29-07-2013 is running fine fullscreen and windowed.
Pretty fast too as it seems, on my old Athlon-II 640.

From my very limited experience, Zorin OS might be a starting point for beginners emulating the Classic OS. Thanks to your build that is. http://zorin-os.com/gallery.html

The X-builds of BII seem to have issues on my side, but thats not important as fullscreen is working.

Even MS-Office98 seems to work with MacOS 8.6 OldWorld ROM.
A bit shaky, likes to crash once in a while. Better than nothing.

Nice Extra: CD-ROM support is still working on a 64bit host.
Alas only my p-ATA Samsung drive plays with SS, CDs in s-ATA device wont mount so far.
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