Dolphin emulator on linux

Dolphin emulator

Dolphin is a Nintendo GameCube and Wii emulator, currently supporting the x86_64 and AArch64 architectures. Dolphin is available for Linux, macOS, Windows, and Android. It is a free and open source, community-developed project. Dolphin was the first GameCube and Wii emulator, and currently the only one capable of playing commercial games.

Contents

Installation

Install one of the following:

Configuration

While no additional configuration is needed for the emulator to run (it is preconfigured with the default settings), altering the settings can improve performance and graphics alike. Settings are split to three main sections, Config, Graphics and DSP.

Config section

On the General tab, check Enable Dual Core and Enable Idle Skipping. The frame limit should be set to «Auto», so that it works with games from all regions. The CPU emulation engine should be left as JIT Recompiler. Only check «Force console as NTSC-J» if intending to play imported Japanese discs.

All options on the «Interface» tab are personal choices.

The Audio tab is the DSP section’s screen; setting it up now means there will be no need to do it later. See the DSP settings paragraph below.

The next two tabs are not very important; the Gamecube tab has settings about connected accessories, such as memory cards, and the only remarkable Wii tab option is the «Aspect Ratio» drop-down list. Set it to either 16:9 or 4:3, depending on the display’s aspect ratio.

On the final tab, «Paths», ISO directories can be set. The directory of game ISOs can also be set by clicking browse from the home screen, but here more options are available, such as Search Subfolders.

Graphics section

This article or section needs expansion.

On the «General» tab, choose OpenGL from the backend drop-down list for the currently most compatible renderer. Set the «Display» and «Other» settings to the desired configuration. V-sync is useful, but it can lead to slowdowns. The «render to main window» option improves the experience aesthetically.

If your graphics card supports Vulkan, using the Vulkan backend may give you higher performance than OpenGL. Note that the Vulkan backend might not be compatible with certain titles, so if you run into issues with a game, try switching back to OpenGL before giving up. The official compatibility list often has hints about how each renderer handles a title.

On the «Enhancements» tab are the options that can improve graphics. While they result to great output, they can slow the emulation down to the point of making games unplayable. Choose the best settings possible, as long as speed remains 100%.

Comparison of options

Option	Performance	Quality
Internal resolution	1x Native	Auto (Window size)
Anti-aliasing	None	at least 2x
Anisotropic filtering	1x	at least 2x
Post-Processing Effect	(off)	your choice (see tip below)
Scaled EFB copy	unchecked	checked
Per-Pixel Lightning	unchecked	checked
Force texture filtering, Widescreen Hack, Disable fog	off	your option (recommended: off)

Unless sure, the Hacks tab is best left untouched.

Defaults

Option	Value
Skip EFB access from CPU	unchecked
Ignore format changes	checked
EFB copies	texture
Texture cache/ Accuracy	Fast
External frame buffer	disable
Cache display lists	unchecked
Disable destination alpha	unchecked
OpenCL texture decoder	unchecked
OpenMP texture decoder	unchecked
Fast depth calculation	checked (Should uncheck for anaglyph 3D)
Vertex streaming hack	unchecked

Similarly, unless sure, leave everything in the Advanced tab unchecked.

DSP section

Set the DSP emulation engine to

• DSP HLE for speed over accuracy,
• DSP LLE recompiler for better accuracy with the cost of some speed,
• DSP LLE interpreter; accurate but makes everything unplayable. Too slow.

DSP LLE on separate thread improves speed on computers with multi-core CPUs, but might cause audio glitches, and is known to break Zelda ucode games. Audio backend is best set to ALSA. For pulseaudio , Dolphin’s optional dependency PulseAudio needs to be installed.

Playing

Click on browse to set a directory of ISOs so that they are shown as a library on Dolphin’s default screen. Otherwise just click Open and select the file.

Dolphin’s Wiki

Whenever a game does not work properly, try reading its page on Dolphin’s wiki. Listed there are tips on setting up the emulator for each game, version compatibility charts, testing entries, troubleshooting and video previews. Contributions, such as testing entries and workarounds are welcome and help other users.

Here is a xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin search action command for searching on Dolphin’s wiki:

Troubleshooting

Incompatibility with Wayland

Dolphin 5.0 is not compatible with Wayland. Force it to run as X11 application via this command:

Launching games fails with «WriteRest Op» error

Add «-fno-pie» to «CXX_FLAGS» when building Dolphin.

Games play too fast

Make sure the framelimit is set to a proper value for the game’s region; 60 for NTSC games or 50 for PAL ones. Auto is recommended. Avoid playing other media simultaneously with Dolphin.

Emulation is too slow

Double-check the CPU scaling governor. If using an NVidia graphics card, on nvidia-settings changing the powermizer setting to «Prefer maximum performance»; check its temperature to make sure the card does not overheat, though. Change Dolphin’s priority using nice. Killing unnecessary processes and disabling compositing also helps. Configuring Dolphin correctly, as described above, is the most important part.

Many systems have more than one GPU, like an integrated low-performance one by Intel and a dedicated graphics card. See PRIME on how to execute Dolphin on your dedicated GPU.

Games frequently stutter on first playthrough, but subsequent runs are smooth

This stutter is likely introduced because graphics rendering has to pause due to shader compilation. Dolphin has gained advanced techniques for minimizing such stutter, called Ubershaders. They require strong GPUs to work best and thus are not enabled by default. In the graphics configuration dialog under «Shader Compilation», try one of the options «Synchronous (Ubershaders)» or «Asynchronous (Ubershaders)». Hover over the radio buttons to see a more detailed explanation text in the dialog. Using the option «Compile Shaders Before Starting» may also reduce stutter, but at the cost of a longer delay before the game starts.

See also: Improving performance – most of the advice should be helpful.

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Installing Dolphin

This page explains how to install or upgrade Dolphin on computer running on different OS. Read the FAQ for more Dolphin information and requirements.

Contents

Profile-breaking Notices

Please check these before updating your Dolphin setup to avoid the Dolphin profile incompatibilities between versions, with the exception of performing the first time Dolphin setup.

• Older save states may not work between versions. Be sure to save your game progress the normal way in-game before updating.
• Since 3.5-2381 , Dolphin for Windows now uses the Global User Directory.
• GameINI: Since 4.0-8581 , FrameLimit = 0x00000001 superseded by EmulationSpeed = 1.00000000 . View the all-new values at GameINI#Emulation Speed (formerly Framelimit)

Windows and Mac

Installing or upgrading process for Dolphin on Windows PC or Mac is pretty simple. Download the latest revision or version from the Download page and extract it into a new folder (preferably named after the revision) or to replace an existing Dolphin setup.

macOS Security Restrictions

When downloading Dolphin for the first time, you may experience crashes or the Dolphin Updater will fail. This may be caused by Gatekeeper, because it moved Dolphin to a «quarantined» location for security. See issue 12105 . While a fix is being made ( PR #8915 ), a temporary fix is to run two commands into Terminal:

Linux

Ready to use packages for a range of Linux distributions are available from Open Build Service: https://software.opensuse.org/package/dolphin-emu

Arch Linux

Install: # pacman -S dolphin-emu

See also the AUR and read more on the ArchWiki.

Debian

Dolphin is available in the repositories of the «testing» and «sid» branches of Debian, for AMD64 and ARM64 platforms. NOTICE: Users of Jessie or any earlier versions MUST build from source as per the instructions linked below in «Other Distros»!

Install: # sudo apt install dolphin-emu

See further package information on the Debian Package Info page.

openSUSE Linux

Install from the software page for dolphin-emu, or use the following code:

Ubuntu

Ubuntu users can add a PPA by executing the following commands to receive updates for Dolphin (Universe repository needs to be enabled first).

Install the stable version:

Or to install the development version:

NOTICE: 14.04 LTS users will need an updated libstdc++6 (>=4.9) to run dolphin-emu or dolphin-emu-master, so install this PPA first:

You don’t need to update all GCC packages, just upgrade libstdc++6, gcc-4.9-base and eventual dependencies in Synaptic, and disable the PPA.

Fedora

On Fedora 24 and later, run the following command:

# dnf install dolphin-emu

Required dependencies will automatically be installed. See also the Fedora Package Database.

Other Distros

Post-Installation Quick Guide

In most cases, the default settings works fine, but Configuring Controllers is the first part that comes into mind that is more than likely needed to be configured.

See Ripping Games to learn how to rip games and saves to your new Dolphin set up. For complete Wii NAND dump to use on Dolphin, see NAND Usage Guide. The homebrew apps are freely available over the internet and can be added to the game list at any time.

Browsing Files

You can simply launch a compatible file by hitting File > Open. then open a file. To add a game to the game list, select Files > Browse for ISOs. then select a folder to be added to the game list.

Banners for Wii games will not load at first. Making a save file for that game fixes it. This is a limitation with the format of Wii games rather than a bug.

Compatible Files by File Extension

File extension	Platform	Notes
.ISO	GameCube and Wii	Generic file extension for disc image files.
.GCM	GameCube	This file extension is interchangeable with .ISO .
.GCZ	GameCube and Wii	Compressed GameCube/Wii disc image file.
.WBFS	Wii	«Wii Backup File System», compressed Wii disc image file.
.WIA	Wii	«Wii ISO Archive», compressed or uncompressed Wii disc image file. Available since 5.0-12188 .
.RVZ	Gamecube and Wii	Compressed GameCube/Wii disc image file. This specifically works in Dolphin. Available since 5.0-12188 .
.WAD	Virtual Console and WiiWare
.DOL , .ELF	Homebrew app

Managing Game List

You can also batch add/remove titles in the game list by creating folders that group each titles by platform (this is to keep game directories well organized), then go to Options > Configure. > «Paths» tab > then hit Add. then enable Search SubFolders within the «Paths» config, then add these folders to the ISO Directories list.

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Building Dolphin on Linux

Users running Linux distros have to build Dolphin from source. Dolphin is compatible with x86-64 and AArch64 Linux distributions. This is a guide to compiling Dolphin using the cmake build system.

For help on building on Ubuntu-based distros, such as Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Zorin OS, Bodhi Linux, Deepin, Linux Lite, Pinguy OS, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME, Edubuntu, Ubuntu Studio or Mythbuntu, see the instructions for Ubuntu below.

Contents

Step 1 — Installing the Dependencies

Ubuntu

Follow the steps below only if you like to make your own package or use a specific git commit version. There’s a PPA with Dolphin already built, easy to use.

18.04 LTS and up

Follow this step for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and later. It probably also works for Debian GNU/Linux 10.
Install all necessary packages by running the following command:

Add -DUSE_SHARED_ENET=ON on cmake line if you want to build Dolphin against shared libenet-dev.

Fedora

Quick method for Fedora 24 and later.

These dependencies must be installed.

The following dependencies are best from RPM Fusion and may not be provided in Fedora repos.

Other Linux Distributions

If running another distribution, see the build dependencies in Addendum A for a list of packages needed to install.

Step 2 — Get the Dolphin Repository

Install git if it’s not already installed:

• for apt-based distros (eg Ubuntu, Debian, Linux Mint): sudo apt install git
• for rpm-based distros (eg Red Hat, Fedora): su -c ‘dnf install git’
• for openSUSE: sudo zypper in git
• for pacman-based distros (eg Arch Linux): sudo pacman -S git

Get a local copy of the dolphin-emu repository:

Change to the directory created.

Pull the git submodules.

git submodule update —init

To update the local copy in the future without repeating the whole process, run git pull origin within the dolphin-emu directory and proceed to the following steps.

For building the current stable (5.0) instead of the most current development build; run the following command

git checkout tags/5.0

Step 3 — Building Dolphin

Create a build subdirectory, and change into it. The name Build is used in this example.

mkdir Build && cd Build

Configure the build. Note that in some cases you will need to configure in the dolphin-emu directory in stead of the build directory.

If you are using a different gcc version (7 on Ubuntu 16.04 for example), you’ll need to overwrite some flags:

cmake .. -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=gcc-7 -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=g++-7

You can compile with clang too:

cmake .. -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=clang -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=clang++ -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS=-stdlib=libc++

Note that you will have to add libc++-dev and libc++abi-dev as dependence in this case. Clang minimum version is 3.4. Use SFML and pugixml from Externals/ (the latter is only necessary for 5.0-7026 and later), otherwise you’ll get some undefined references.

Optionally you can change the install prefix by adding «-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/new/path». Note that this path does not need to be absolute. cmake will complete it to its absolute equivalent. The default prefix is «/usr». This means that the executable will be installed as «/usr/bin/dolphin-emu», the plugins will be installed into «/usr/lib/dolphin-emu», and the shared data files will be installed into «/usr/share/dolphin-emu».

From here build and install in the standard make way.

sudo make install

Note that superuser privileges are needed for make install .

To have the «local» build setup from the deprecated scons build configure the build with the following command.

cmake -Dbindir=../Binary/Linux -Ddatadir=../Binary/Linux ..

Step 4 — Run Dolphin!

Run Dolphin by executing:

The same action can be done graphically from within some desktop environments, such as Unity’s Dash menu on Ubuntu.
If the prefix was changed in step 3 and $prefix/bin is not in the path, then precede this with the path to the executable.

Go to the forums. Lots of Dolphin users use Linux, and they are very experienced with this process.

• My build failed, but I did nothing wrong!

Most of the time, any problems in the build process are due to user error. It’s understandable, it is a complicated process and can be quite daunting for a first timer. But sometimes even with everything right, triple checked, and it’s still not working. It’s rare, but sometimes a build will just be bugged. But many of Dolphin devs are Linux users, so just wait a day or so, and it will be sorted out. If you are trying on Ubuntu 16.04, it is tested and working now.

Here is a PKGBUILD for the stable branch. For the master branch, see this PKGBUILD (in pkgver=4.0.rxxxx.7222eb1 replace «xxxx» with the number of the desired revision). Other PKGBUILDs can be found on the Arch User Repository.

Addendum A

Outdated This section has not been updated since July 2019 and no longer aligns with Dolphin’s current dependencies.

This addendum lists the dependencies to build Dolphin.

Build Dependencies

These packages must be installed before building Dolphin.

• git
• cmake
• pkg-config
• gcc
• libwxbase3.0-dev
• libwxgtk3.0-dev
• libgtk2.0-dev
• libxext-dev
• libreadline-dev
• libgl1-mesa-dev
• libevdev-dev
• libudev-dev

Optional dependencies

Package	Service
libasound-dev	for alsa sound backend
libpulse-dev	for pulseaudio sound backend
libao-dev	for ao sound backend
libopenal-dev	for openal sound backend
libavcodec-dev	for dumping frames in AVI format
libavformat-dev	for dumping frames in AVI format
libswscale-dev	for dumping frames in AVI format
libenet-dev (>= 1.3.12)	if not found will be built statically
liblzo2-dev (>= 2.04)	if not found will be built statically
libminiupnpc-dev (>= 1.8)	if not found will be built statically
libpolarssl-dev (>= 1.3.8)	if not found will be built statically (Debian Testing/Unstable replaced this with mbedtls, see https://ftp-master.debian.org/removals.txt)
libsoil-dev	if not found will be built statically
libsoundtouch-dev (>= 1.8.1)	if not found will be built statically
libsfml-dev (>= 2.1)	if not found will be built statically
libusb-1.0-0-dev (>= 1.0.19)	if not found will be built statically
libbluetooth-dev	for real Wii Remotes
libxrandr-dev	for switching desktop resolution in fullscreen mode

Addendum B

Scripts for building Dolphin.

General purpose script

This script checks for Dolphin’s source code, downloads it or updates it, then compiles it and finally installs it. It is somewhat interactive and distro-independent.
It will not install any of the dependencies listed above, and will fail if any of them are missing. Install manually as described at the first step.
Licence: GNU General Public Licence v2 or (at your option) any later version of the GPL.

Put this script in any directory, preferably a subdirectory of the Home directory, such as

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