Other Distributions

Running on Non-Debian Distributions

The .deb on the releases page targets Debian/Ubuntu — but the tarball release runs on any modern glibc x86_64 Linux. It's fully self-contained on the .NET side (the runtime is bundled; nothing to install), so the only requirements are a handful of ordinary system libraries.

mkdir -p ~/Apps/Emutastic
tar xzf Emutastic-<version>-linux-x64.tar.gz -C ~/Apps/Emutastic
~/Apps/Emutastic/Emutastic

In-app updates work the same as on Debian (Preferences → About → Update Now downloads and applies the new tarball in place).

What the system must provide

Dependency	Used for	Required?
SDL3	Controllers + game audio	Yes
Mesa / GL drivers (libGL, libEGL, Wayland-EGL)	Game rendering	Yes
fontconfig + X11 client libraries	UI text + windowing (the library window runs via Xwayland on Wayland sessions)	Yes
ICU	.NET globalization	Yes (present on essentially every desktop)
ffmpeg (the CLI)	Gameplay recording	Only for recording
libVLC + base plugins	Video snap previews on the game detail card	Optional — cards fall back to static images
dbus-send	"Show in Files" file-manager integration	Optional — falls back to opening the folder

The quickest health check after extracting:

ldd ~/Apps/Emutastic/Emutastic | grep "not found"   # empty output = good

SDL3 is the dependency most likely to be missing — it's new enough (2024) that some distributions only ship it in their latest releases.

Per-distro notes

Verified against each distribution's package index as of June 2026; package names can drift, so let your package manager's search confirm.

Arch / Manjaro / EndeavourOS

SDL3 is in extra — everything needed is in the official repos:

sudo pacman -S --needed sdl3 mesa fontconfig icu ffmpeg vlc

An AUR package (emutastic-bin) repackaging the official tarball is being prepared; once published, yay -S emutastic-bin handles all of the above.

Fedora

The SDL3 package exists in Fedora 43 and later — earlier releases don't carry it (build from source, or wait for the planned Flatpak).

sudo dnf install SDL3 mesa-libGL mesa-libEGL fontconfig libicu

For recording and snap previews: full ffmpeg and VLC generally come from RPM Fusion; Fedora's own ffmpeg-free also works for recording (x264 is the only encoder Emutastic uses — if ffmpeg-free in your release lacks libx264, use the RPM Fusion build).

openSUSE Tumbleweed

SDL3 has shipped in Tumbleweed since 2024 (3.4.x as of early 2026); per openSUSE shared-library naming the runtime package is libSDL3-0:

sudo zypper install libSDL3-0 Mesa-libGL1 Mesa-libEGL1 fontconfig

ICU is preinstalled (versioned libicu## packages). ffmpeg with x264 and VLC are best taken from Packman — openSUSE's official builds strip patent-encumbered codecs. Leap users: check whether your Leap release carries SDL3 before trying.

Anything else (Gentoo, Void, NixOS, …)

You need: SDL3, Mesa GL/EGL, fontconfig, ICU, and optionally ffmpeg + libVLC. The binary is a standard glibc x86_64 .NET single-folder publish — if the ldd check above comes back clean, you're done.

musl-based distros (Alpine, etc.) are not supported — the published build links glibc.

Wayland and X11

Both work out of the box. On a Wayland session the game window runs as a native Wayland toplevel (the smooth path — preferred automatically); the library window runs through Xwayland. On plain X11 everything runs through X11/SDL. No environment variables needed in either case.

SELinux notes (Fedora/RHEL family)

The app executes cores (.so files) downloaded to ~/.local/share/Emutastic/Cores/. The default targeted policy allows this for user-domain processes; if you run a hardened policy and a core fails to dlopen, check ausearch -m AVC -ts recent before suspecting the app.

Flatpak

A Flathub submission is planned — that will make the distro question moot for most users (and solve the SDL3-on-older-Fedora problem). Until then, the tarball is the universal answer.

Building from source

Any distro with the .NET 10 SDK and a C toolchain can build from source — see the README. This also produces binaries linked against your exact system libraries.