Is it possible to install ZSNES Emulator from default software sources?

Solution 1:

zsnes exists in the Universe repository for 32bit Natty only.

If you look here on launchpad for the zsnes package, you'll note there is no 64bit package available - just the 32bit (i386) package.

To get this to work under 64bit requires a bit of terminal work...

Download the 32bit package from here into your Downloads folder.

Install all the dependencies:

sudo apt-get install libao4 libc6 libgcc1 libgl1-mesa-glx libpng12-0 libsdl1.2debian libstdc++6 zlib1g

Then do the following:

cd ~/Downloads
dpkg -x zsnes_1.510-2.2ubuntu4_i386.deb zsnes_dir
cd zsnes_dir/usr/bin

You can now run the application by running

./zsnes -ad sdl

source

Solution 2:

simply run this command first

apt-get build-dep zsnes

It'll download and install all the 32bit dependencies to get zsnes to run. Next you just install zsnes as usual using this command

apt-get install zsnes

finally, after you have successfully installed zsnes we just want to get rid of the dependencies we needed to install/build it by simply running this command

aptitude markauto $(apt-cache showsrc zsnes | grep Build-Depends | perl -p -e 's/(?:[\[(].+?[\])]|Build-Depends:|,|\|)//g')

Solution 3:

I thought I'd share a different strategy that I ran across in the search for installing ZSNES on amd64.

If you don't mind using a different emulator (a better one in my opinion), there is a port of SNES9x available.

First, add these sources to your sources.list file in etc/apt.

to edit the file as root, open your terminal and type:

cd etc/apt
sudo gedit sources.list

Once that is opened, add these two lines into the textfile, and save:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/bearoso/ppa/ubuntu raring main 
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/bearoso/ppa/ubuntu raring main 

ALSO, REPLACE "raring" WITH WHATEVER VERSION OF UBUNTU YOU ARE RUNNING CURRENTLY.

Then, in your terminal, type:

sudo apt-get update

Once that is done, install the program using this command:

sudo apt-get install snes9x-gtk

Once installed, just search for the app in your dashboard, and run it!

Config is simple, and it's a great emu in my opinion, it's been around for years, and this port works great so far.

-Chris