Who doesn't have a microsoft OS?

[bedouin]

The emulation scene is pretty platform agnostic.  Most popular emus were built with portability in mind, which is why you'll find stuff like MAME available for Linux, OS X, Windows, BeOS, and probably platforms I can't think of right now.  Many emus were developed on Linux first anyway.

If the only thing stopping you from switching to Linux is a fear that game emulators will run slower, I doubt you have much to worry about; the performance should be about equal.  Emulating a 6502 CPU or whatever doesn't require much.

[Aloone_Jonez]

The 2 emulators I use to run old Megadrive and SNES games on both have Linux ports, but I'm currently using the Windows versions because my winmodem doesn't work under Linux. Sure I could just download them, boot into Linux and compile but there again what would be the point in that? - When I need download any new games I would have to reboot to Windows, why bother? - I can both download them and play them in Windows.

Also as I haven't found any of these emulators in package format so I'd have to fuck around compiling shit, not to mention the Linux nightmare of module dependences.

If your having problems with slow graphics in Linux it's probably because you're using a shitty unaccelerated driver, although most graphics cards will work under Linux you can often have a hard  time getting good performance.

Oh and another thing, most good emulators are open-source, the two I use are:

gens - Being part-written in assembly language it's quite possibly fastest Sega Megadrive emulator in the world, it supports 32x and Sega CD games too, unfortunately this is also a major shortcoming as being asm it's 86x only.

ZSNES - a great Super Nintendo emulator, I haven't seen the source but it might also contain some asm code as there is no Mac OS port available.

I conclude that because fastest emulators contain large amounts of assembly code, Mac OS users are penalised far more than Linux users as far a old game emulation is concerned. Also not having fast Linux drivers for some of graphics  card is also an issue.

[WMD]

quote:Also as I haven't found any of these emulators in package format so I'd have to fuck around compiling shit, not to mention the Linux nightmare of module dependences.

There you are, Aloone  

Dependencies are a binary problem, not a source one.  The issue comes from having binaries compiled against libraries you don't have; the source compiles against what you do have.

[bedouin]

I haven't been a Linux user in over 2 years.  The biggest problem I remember having was trying to get Linux to recognize my gamepad; I don't think I ever figured that out.  As far as performance was concerned though, I don't remember there being any issues; that was on a p650 at the time.

Then again, I also remember using a variety of emulators on my old p133, so I'm not sure how optimized emulation of such low-end CPUs needs to be.

As for your winmodem issue, have you ever considered buying a trusty old external US Robotics modem off EBay?  As far as cross-platform compatibility nothing beats a serial port modem; you could probably find them pretty cheap nowadays too.  Another option would be buying an Airport Base Station with the modem built-in; the first-generation models are going for like $50 nowadays -- sometimes less.  

Emulation on the Mac is fine.  Whether emus for OS X have been optimized or not isn't of much concern to me; as long as games play smoothly and without any hiccups I'm happy.  

For SNES on Mac I use Snes9X; for Genesis I use Genesis Plus.  I'm more of an 8-bit fan though, so I spend more time with Master System Plus (the best system ever made!) and RockNES.  MacMame comes in a close second, especially since it plays all the NeoGeo ROMs.

Emulation is really great to me, because it let me play so many games and systems I wanted to own as a kid, but coudln't.

[wilko125]

i have no trouble at all with old emus like snes and gba (BTW i emulate every console up to the PSX and N64, i mean every console) its just that i its to slow running a game like UT (i get about 30 fps on windows) cos i get about 12 fps which is cruddy!

[bedouin]

What kind of video card do you have?  It definitely sounds like Linux isn't using accelerated drivers; maybe there are some available for your particular card.

[wilko125]

8mb Riva128, im just using Nv3 drivers, they work good, just its most windows games are accelerated using directx, and i can't really emulate directx so i use windows, which might i add has f***ed up on me for about the tenth time this week, ill be in like notepad making a batch or something and explorer.exe does something illegal andi have to restart. How ghey is that the actual shell is doing illegal things inside itself! Anyway i will perservere for a while until i get a better comp, and then ill emulate all the windows games i can!

[Refalm]

If you don't have much money, get a GeForce 4 MX. It's cheap, great and works helluvah fine in Linux.

[WMD]

Nah, get a used GeForce4 Ti.  Much faster and, by now, around the same price.

[Refalm]

quote:WMD: Nah, get a used GeForce4 Ti.  Much faster and, by now, around the same price.

Oh, well if it's the same price, yes the Ti is better.