So, I’m not as much in the habit of compiling my own versions from source as I once was, as Ubuntu and many other distros have eliminated the need in many cases. However, KEGS (an Apple IIGS Emulator) is an example where compilation from source is well worth the trouble.

I tend to do everything from the command line in such cases, including installation of missing packages.

From the command line, type

sudo apt-get install build-essentials

This installs many (but not all) of the items that you’ll need to install KEGS.

Now, open the KEGS source file and extract it (including directory structure) to a convenient location. From the terminal, cd into kegs-0.91/src. At this point, you’ll need to get rid of the link to the vars file as it is not for the correct architecture. Simply type:

rm vars

Now, you need to create a link to the correct vars file. Type

ln -s vars_x86linux vars

This creates a link to the correct vars file. This file is read-only, however, and there is a change that needs to be made, so type:

chmod u=rw vars

This sets the user bits to read and write. Go ahead and open the file in your favorite text edit (I use joe from the command line but Mousepad or others will work fine). For the line that starts with CCOPTS, change the -march=pentium parameter to read -march=native. Save and exit the text editor.

Before you can compile, however, there are several missing libraries from the standard 14.04 distro that are needed. Do the following:

sudo apt-get install libx11-dev

sudo apt-get install libxext-dev

At this point, make sure you’re still in the src directory and type:

make

This might be fairly quick or take several minutes. You’ll probably see a number of warnings and such as the system compiles, but when the normal prompt returns, you can change directory up one level to the kegs-91 folder. Listing the files should show an executable file called xkegs. A note here is that kegs utilizes the older audio system from Ubuntu so you’ll be running the program with an audio wrapper. To test your installation, type:

padsp ./xkegs

You should see the KEGS window with all @ characters and system summary at the bottom. If this is successful, you can move the xkegs executable wherever you’d like (no other files are required) and then create a script that will run the program with the audio wrapper, using your text editor. Place these two lines into a file then set the executable bit on the file. You can then run this script file which will run xkegs with its audio wrapper.

#!/bin/sh

padsp /opt/kegs/xkegs

One other bit that I noted after typing this: make sure you copy the config.kegs file from the kegs-91 folder to your home folder; you can leave it named config.kegs or you can rename it to .config.kegs so it will stay hidden. As kegs will automatically manage this file for the most part, I’d rename it so it doesn’t clutter the system.

If you need disks, etc., to get you started, search for ftp asimov. Just about anything you need can be found on their site.

Hope this helps!