VICE on Linux? How do you start it?

[cgutjahr]

However, I installed VICE, but no icon appears

It's been a while since I used Ubuntu, but I IIRC it used to put the VICE icons in some really strange section of the start menu - like "System monitors" or something like that. Check the entire menu for the x* entries, they should be there...

Hm, wait - I just downloaded the actual vice package from the Ubuntu repositories and checked the *.desktop files in there (little text files that tell your system what icon to use for an application what description to put into help bubbles and where to put it in the menu. The relevant line in x64.desktop says:

Categories=Application;X-Debian-Applications-Emulators;

Neither "Application" nor "X-Debian-Applications-Emulators" are standard categories, afaik - which means the package maintainer for VICE on ubuntu would have screwed up - i.e. it's a bug.

Fix:

open a terminal (or use alt-f2), type:

gksudo leafpad /usr/share/applications/x64.desktop

followed by enter. Replace "Application" in the line mentioned above  with "Game". Then save and exit. Do the same for the other executables (yakumo9275 listed them).

I'm not sure how/when Ubuntu rereads information from your modified *.desktop files, you might have to log off and on again for the changes to take effect.

Are you aware that you have to install the Commodore ROMs seperately? The can't be legally distributed with the emulator.

I don't know where to look for the executable.

You can run any installed program by simply typing its name in the console - or use the alt-f2 shortcut yakumo9275 mentioned.

[cgutjahr]

Here's a cut and paste from my Terminal showing me running the x64 command.

My guess (and it's really just a guess) is that there's some sort of problem with your ancient CPU and the way the binary has been compiled - I remember some Ubuntu users with older systems having problems trying to run VICE.

You can find several versions of VICE here: http://pkgs.org/download/vice
(use the *_386.deb packages for the different Debian distributions, they've got VICE 2.2, 2.3 and 2.4), try them out one by one.

IIRC, Ubuntu offers to install *.debs while downloading, or when doubleclicking them in the file manager. If not, open console and type "sudo dpkg -i " to install a downloaded deb and "sudo apt-get remove vice" to uninstall it again.

If that doesn't work, you'd have to compile your own version of VICE. It's not as scary as it sounds, and still better than using Wine.

my main menu (start bar thingy) doesn't have an applications folder.

AFAIK, no menu on any Linux desktop has an applications folder, which is why this particular choice is very stupid anyway - VICE does seem to have a bunch of problems...

But this is purely a desktop thing, it doesn't affect running VICE from the console - you can fix it later on.

Well, that's how I ran it on my Windows XP partition - no need to install anything - just unpack and go.

That's because the people creating the Windows distribution don't mind distributing the ROMs without a license - they know nobody's ever going to complain. The open source community on the other hand is all about respecting other people's rights, so just bundling stuff you're not entitled to bundle is a big no-go.