How can I get the vice C64 (commodore 64) emulator to work

update --- there is a new release now, 3.3, and as 3.2, works great.

I managed to compile it with trial-and-errors adding the following libraries:

sudo apt install xa65 libreadline-dev libxaw7-dev libgtkmm-3.0-dev libpulse-dev

and compiled with

./configure
make
sudo make install 

...and it seems to work (the lib hack is not needed anymore). Seems a quite live project!

Original content:

You can compile the native version pretty easily (well...). Tested with version 2.4. (compact instructions --- tell me if you need more details).

1) download the last version from http://vice-emu.sourceforge.net/

2) unpack it where you want

tar xvzf vice-3.1.tar.gz
cd vice-3.1

3) install required dev libraries:

sudo apt install build-essential  libvte-dev libasound2-dev libgtk2.0-dev libgnome2-dev byacc flex

4) configure, compile and install (it will go in /usr/local/). On my netbook, I have a coffee after the "make"...

./configure --enable-gnomeui
make
sudo make install

5) if you machine is 64 bit, do the following (as root)

cd /usr/local/lib
sudo ln -s ../lib64/vice .

(this is probably a bug; the emulator will search the ROMS in /usr/local/lib even if the installation is a 64 bit one and the install program will put the libraries under /usr/local/lib64/)

6) type x64 and Enjoy! (this thing evokes a tear... my first computer ever was a C64. If only I did not lose my discs...)

To install vice with the default roms, you can

1. Install vice from the system repos

   sudo apt-get install vice
   

2. Install the roms,

   1. Download the source tarball http://vice-emu.sourceforge.net/index.html#download and extract it to /tmp

   2. Run the following commands to copy over the data files,

      find /tmp/vice-*/data \
        -mindepth 1 \
        -type d \
        -exec sudo cp -rnv {} /usr/lib/vice/ \;
      

now you can use x64 and x64sc to run the bin files.