Free Like GNU

Shawn Moore has posted instructions for installing zsnes on the XO from his blog. I noticed a few typos and here is how I did it. This is a good way to get over any fears of compiling software from source code!

• get “root”

$ su

• install the library source files and compiler

# yum install gcc gcc-c++ make nasm zlib-devel SDL-devel

• leave root mode

# exit

• get the source for zsnes itself:

$ wget http://superb-west.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/zsnes/zsnes151src.tar.bz2

• extract the archived source:

$tar jxvf zsnes151src.tar.bz2

• enter the extracted folder to src…

$ cd zsnes_1_51/src

• configure the compiler

$ ./configure –disable-debugger –disable-opengl

• compile zsnes

$ make

• it’ll take a few minutes to compile then try running it!

$ ./zsnes

enjoy!

If you want to install the program in your system for all users to run, read on…

• get root and make install (this goes quickly)

$ su

# make install

• the program file ends up within /usr/local/bin so lets append the path to our shell. Drop out of root..

# exit

$ nano /home/olpc/.bash_profile

• add :/usr/local/bin to the end of the line that starts with PATH= so it looks like

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin:/usr/local/bin

• ctrl-x to exit nano and save

# exit

your current session does not know about the path (the terminal only checks /etc/profile only on startup) so we’ll add it manually for this session

$ PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin

$ export PATH

• more information about how the path works can be found HERE (codecoffee.com) zsnes should now be easily run from a users regular prompt:

$ zsnes

it’s up to you to acquire or make roms for this to run. NOTE: using commercial closed roms is not free like GNU, in case you didn’t already know!

EDIT: removed the quotes from the wget step and changed the path configuration to just the olpc user DOH!