Tempest Posted November 13, 2019 Share Posted November 13, 2019 Is there a good Atari 8-Bit emulator that runs in Linux? I think Atari800 has a Linux port, but it's old and very clunky to use. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Robot Posted November 13, 2019 Share Posted November 13, 2019 Atari800. Last release was 7 months ago. Hardly very old! https://github.com/atari800/atari800 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted November 13, 2019 Author Share Posted November 13, 2019 33 minutes ago, Mr Robot said: Atari800. Last release was 7 months ago. Hardly very old! https://github.com/atari800/atari800 I must have had an old version then. The one I was using was two or so years old. Is Atari800 the only Linux emulator? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chilly Willy Posted November 13, 2019 Share Posted November 13, 2019 Not aware of any others, but Altirra works great in WINE. That's the emu I use in Xubuntu (the repo version of A800 is only 3.1.0). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zzip Posted November 13, 2019 Share Posted November 13, 2019 2 hours ago, Tempest said: Is there a good Atari 8-Bit emulator that runs in Linux? I think Atari800 has a Linux port, but it's old and very clunky to use. Atari800 works great. the interface mimics an Atari-8bit menu system, and it very fast to use There's also Atari++ which was originally a fork of Atari800, but it has more of a GUI-style interface. It does some things that Atari800 doesn't do properly, (and vice versa). Mess, which is part of Mame has atari 8-bit emulation, but it's not very good last I checked. I've heard Altirra works under Wine, but I haven't tried this yet because atari800/atari++ do everything I need Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted November 13, 2019 Author Share Posted November 13, 2019 I'll have to look into Atari++ then. Maybe I'll give Atari800 another look too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gozar Posted November 14, 2019 Share Posted November 14, 2019 17 hours ago, Tempest said: I'll have to look into Atari++ then. Maybe I'll give Atari800 another look too. atari800 works really well, and it's easy to script from the command line so you can set up different machines running different software if you want. Is there something it doesn't do that you need? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted November 14, 2019 Author Share Posted November 14, 2019 1 hour ago, gozar said: atari800 works really well, and it's easy to script from the command line so you can set up different machines running different software if you want. Is there something it doesn't do that you need? I honestly don't want to mess with the command line and make scripts. I want something more like Atari800Win with a decent GUI. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zzip Posted November 14, 2019 Share Posted November 14, 2019 4 hours ago, Tempest said: I honestly don't want to mess with the command line and make scripts. I want something more like Atari800Win with a decent GUI. I believe you can do everything from the built-in atari800 Menu (press F1 to enter)-- change disks, change roms, change screen size, sound, OS revisions, cold/warm resets, 800/XL/XE modes, Ram expansions, etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gozar Posted November 15, 2019 Share Posted November 15, 2019 17 hours ago, zzip said: I believe you can do everything from the built-in atari800 Menu (press F1 to enter)-- change disks, change roms, change screen size, sound, OS revisions, cold/warm resets, 800/XL/XE modes, Ram expansions, etc. Yeah, the menu is pretty awesome, it feels like you're using an Atari! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daedalus2097 Posted November 15, 2019 Share Posted November 15, 2019 Atari800 works well for me too on Linux Mint. The menu is slightly clunky compared to a fancy GUI, but for my (limited) use it's never been a problem. If you have an older version, it might be from your distro's software centre, rather than the Github page or wherever. Often the versions of software in a distro's repository are quite old, especially niche software like Atari800 that might escape the attention of the repository maintainers. Getting the latest .deb or .rpm from the source repository is the best bet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted November 15, 2019 Author Share Posted November 15, 2019 I just installed it last night on Manjaro using the AUR repository and I can tell already it's a much newer version. For one thing it has that cute little Amiga like splash screen for when you don't have any OS roms. The menu looks better too and seems to actually expand properly when I expand the window. Whatever version I was using when I was running Ubuntu must have been pretty old. i only wish it had an icon I could click to open it instead of running it from the command line. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roydea6 Posted November 15, 2019 Share Posted November 15, 2019 1 hour ago, Tempest said: i only wish it had an icon I could click to open it instead of running it from the command line. copy your command line setting to a text file and rename Atari800.bat or what ever Linux will handle. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zzip Posted November 15, 2019 Share Posted November 15, 2019 3 hours ago, Tempest said: i only wish it had an icon I could click to open it instead of running it from the command line. That is straightforward to add on linux, but it depends which desktop environment you are in. Usually you right-click on the the desktop and add a "launcher" or an "application". You tell it what command to launch, and can pick an icon for it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted November 15, 2019 Author Share Posted November 15, 2019 I'm using Gnome. The weird thing is that normally once I launch an app and it appears (at least temporarily) in the launcher bar you can right click on it and keep it in the launcher. Not only is this option not available for Atari800 but there's actually no icon for it either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zzip Posted November 15, 2019 Share Posted November 15, 2019 6 minutes ago, Tempest said: I'm using Gnome. The weird thing is that normally once I launch an app and it appears (at least temporarily) in the launcher bar you can right click on it and keep it in the launcher. Not only is this option not available for Atari800 but there's actually no icon for it either. Ah, unfortunately I'm not that familiar with Gnome, so I'm not sure how to get around that. I've used KDE and more recently XFCE. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted November 15, 2019 Author Share Posted November 15, 2019 2 minutes ago, zzip said: Ah, unfortunately I'm not that familiar with Gnome, so I'm not sure how to get around that. I've used KDE and more recently XFCE. Tried KDE Plasma for about two seconds and immediately went back to Gnome. XFCE looks decent, but since I came from Ubuntu I'm used to Gnome so I stuck with it. Besides, with Gnome I can do tweaks that make my desktop look more like MacOS which I like. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zzip Posted November 15, 2019 Share Posted November 15, 2019 42 minutes ago, Tempest said: Tried KDE Plasma for about two seconds and immediately went back to Gnome. XFCE looks decent, but since I came from Ubuntu I'm used to Gnome so I stuck with it. Besides, with Gnome I can do tweaks that make my desktop look more like MacOS which I like. Yeah.. I was a KDE fan from the time it appeared in the late 90s, but they lost me with recent developments. I just couldn't bear it anymore, so I tried a bunch of alternate desktops. XFCE impressed me with how fast, configurable and familar it was. Does everything I need and didn't get in the way. (And I'm pretty sure it has MacOS themes if you get curious about it :) ) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
E474 Posted November 15, 2019 Share Posted November 15, 2019 Hi, Atari800 has a configuration file called ".atari800.cfg" in your home directory, you can put a lot of configuration options in there to save you setting them each time you start atari800. You can edit this configuration file with a GUI text editor, but you will need to be able to see hidden files in a directory listing, which should be a setting in the text editor or file manager, depending on how you want to start editing the file. I use KDE, but have also installed some of the Gnome utilities, such as the Gnome disk partitioner, which is quite good for formatting sd cards, usb sticks and drives. I'm on Ubuntu 16.04, I thought I would sit out the fallout from Ubuntu dropping the Unity desktop, so am on an old version of Atari800, which to be fair, I am quite happy with. Hope this helps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted November 15, 2019 Author Share Posted November 15, 2019 21 minutes ago, E474 said: Hi, Atari800 has a configuration file called ".atari800.cfg" in your home directory, you can put a lot of configuration options in there to save you setting them each time you start atari800. You can edit this configuration file with a GUI text editor, but you will need to be able to see hidden files in a directory listing, which should be a setting in the text editor or file manager, depending on how you want to start editing the file. I use KDE, but have also installed some of the Gnome utilities, such as the Gnome disk partitioner, which is quite good for formatting sd cards, usb sticks and drives. I'm on Ubuntu 16.04, I thought I would sit out the fallout from Ubuntu dropping the Unity desktop, so am on an old version of Atari800, which to be fair, I am quite happy with. Hope this helps. It does, I'll have to look into this when I get a chance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zzip Posted November 15, 2019 Share Posted November 15, 2019 18 minutes ago, E474 said: Hi, Atari800 has a configuration file called ".atari800.cfg" in your home directory, you can put a lot of configuration options in there to save you setting them each time you start atari800. You can edit this configuration file with a GUI text editor, but you will need to be able to see hidden files in a directory listing, which should be a setting in the text editor or file manager, depending on how you want to start editing the file. I use KDE, but have also installed some of the Gnome utilities, such as the Gnome disk partitioner, which is quite good for formatting sd cards, usb sticks and drives. I'm on Ubuntu 16.04, I thought I would sit out the fallout from Ubuntu dropping the Unity desktop, so am on an old version of Atari800, which to be fair, I am quite happy with. Hope this helps. The built-in UI will also save changes to the .atari800.cfg file Also an advanced trick is to have multiple atari800.cfg files, maybe one to emulate an 800, one for XE, one for 5200, one to turn Basic on/off or whatever, you tell the command line which to load Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Robot Posted November 15, 2019 Share Posted November 15, 2019 https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-create-desktop-shortcut-launcher-on-ubuntu-18-04-bionic-beaver-linux Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mazzspeed Posted January 11, 2021 Share Posted January 11, 2021 Atari800 works great here. It's easy to install from the official universe repo (sudo apt install atari800) and pressing F1 brings up the menu. Furthermore, the version from the repo is the latest 4.1.0. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrFSL Posted January 11, 2021 Share Posted January 11, 2021 Used many emulators - vastly prefer atari800 - but that is mostly because (like others have said here) the menu resembles Atari. I do wish the menu was organized differently though and that might be a compile project for me in the future. As it stands though - if you want to launch an emulator on a minimal system without a desktop to make a fake-atari... or pi-atari... or what have you... its a good choice. I have a binary of Atari++ around and I just don't care for it. If you are going to supply a GUI... please... make it a better GUI then Atari++ provides. Regarding the launch though... .desktop files are portable... so I am going to attach one. atari800.desktop No... I didn't pick a pretty Icon... but when I double click this it launches and I can right-click and tell it to stay in the dock and it does. Hope it works for you. Desktop files (launcher files) are text documents. Feel free to edit it and point it towards your favorite icon... or I think you can right-click > properties... something like that. When you are happy enough with your launcher, dropping it in ~/.local/share/applications should make it appear in your Applications menu. Cheers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VinsCool Posted January 12, 2021 Share Posted January 12, 2021 Altirra Emulator works great in WINE for me Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.