Linux emulation software

compatibility layer for running Windows software on Unix-like systems

DOSBox is a free and open-source MS-DOS emulator. It supports running programs primarily video games that are otherwise inaccessible since hardware for running a compatible disk operating system (DOS) is obsolete and generally unavailable today. It was first released in 2002, when DOS technology was becoming obsolete. Its adoption for running DOS games is relatively widespread, partly because of its use in commercial re-releases of games.

The Quick Emulator (QEMU) is a free and open-source machine emulator and virtualizer. As a Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) it supports a number of hypervisors including the Linux based Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM), Xen, MacOS's HVF, Window's Hyper-V and a number of others. It is also capable of emulating a number of Instruction set architectures on any supported host through its JIT binary translator known at the Tiny Code Generator (TCG). This allows it to emulate full systems or run individual programs compiled for one processor architecture on any other. QEMU supports the emulation of x

MAME (formerly an acronym of Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) is a free and open-source emulator designed to emulate the hardware of arcade games, later expanded to include video game consoles, old computers and other systems in software on modern personal computers and other platforms. Its intention is to preserve gaming history by preventing vintage video games from being lost or forgotten. It does this by emulating the inner workings of the emulated machines; the ability to actually play the video games is considered "a nice side effect". Joystiq has listed MAME as an application that ever

PCSX2 is a free and open-source emulator of the PlayStation 2 for x86 computers. It supports most PlayStation 2 video games with a high level of compatibility and functionality, and also supports a number of improvements over gameplay on a traditional PlayStation 2, such as the ability to use higher resolutions than native, anti-aliasing and texture filtering. It has been released for Windows, Linux, and macOS.

software

Nintendo GameCube and Wii emulation software

PPSSPP (an acronym for "PlayStation Portable Simulator Suitable for Playing Portably") is a free and open-source PSP emulator for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, Nintendo Wii U, Nintendo Switch, BlackBerry 10, MeeGo, Pandora, Xbox Series X/S and Symbian with a focus on speed and portability. It was released to the public on November 1, 2012, licensed under the GNU GPLv2 or later. The PPSSPP project was created by Henrik Rydgård, one of the co-founders of the Dolphin emulator.

VisualBoyAdvance (commonly abbreviated as VBA) is a free emulator of the Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance handheld game consoles as well as of Super Game Boy and Super Game Boy 2.

Bochs (pronounced "box") is a portable IA-32 and x86-64 IBM PC compatible emulator and debugger mostly written in C++ and distributed as free software under the GNU Lesser General Public License. It supports emulation of the processor(s) (including protected mode), memory, disks, display, Ethernet, BIOS and common hardware peripherals of PCs.

RPCS3 is a free and open-source emulator and debugger for the Sony PlayStation 3 that runs on Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and macOS operating systems, allowing PlayStation 3 games and software to be played and debugged on a personal computer. It is in active development, targeting x86-64 and ARM64 CPUs featuring OpenGL and Vulkan as backend renderers.

ePSXe (enhanced PSX emulator) is a PlayStation video game console emulator for x86-based PC hardware with Microsoft Windows and Linux, as well as devices running Android. It was written by three authors, using the aliases calb, _Demo_ and Galtor. ePSXe is closed source with the exception of the application programming interface (API) for its plug-ins.

Nintendo 3DS emulator

Nintendo Switch emulation software

ZSNES is an emulator for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System released as free software. There are official ports for Linux, MS-DOS, Windows, and unofficial ports for Xbox, and macOS.

Mednafen (My Emulator Doesn't Need A Frickin' Excellent Name), formerly known as Nintencer, is an OpenGL and SDL multi-system free software wrapper that bundles various original and third-party emulation cores into a single package, and is driven by command-line input. It is distributed under the terms of the GPL-2.0-or-later license. Certain emulation cores of Mednafen have been ported to RetroArch/Libretro.

DOSEMU, stylized as dosemu, is a compatibility layer software package that enables DOS operating systems (e.g., MS-DOS, DR-DOS, FreeDOS) and application software to run atop Linux on x86-based PCs (IBM PC compatible computers).

computer emulator which emulates the hardware of Commodore International's Amiga range of computers

multi-platform emulator for mainframe software

macOS compatibility layer for GNU/Linux

Nestopia UE - and its predecessor Nestopia - are open-source NES/Famicom emulators designed to emulate the NES hardware as accurately as possible.

Cemu is a free and open-source Wii U emulator, first released on October 13, 2015 for Microsoft Windows as a closed-source emulator developed by Exzap and Petergov. With the release of Cemu 2.1 on August 27, 2024 it gained stable support for Linux and macOS. Though still under development, it is able to run the majority of games smoothly, assuming compatible hardware. The popularity of the emulator spiked with the release of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in 2017 as Cemu successfully booted and ran the title within hours of its release.

Lutris is a free and open source game manager for Linux-based operating systems developed and maintained by Mathieu Comandon and the community, released under the GNU General Public License.

FCEUX is an open-source Nintendo Entertainment System and Family Computer Disk System emulator. It is a merger of various forks of FCE Ultra.

emulation software that aims to recreate the hardware of many classic home computer systems

operating system build service

Open Source 68k Macintosh emulator

software mechanism in which a software either emulates an older version of software, or mimics another operating system in order to allow obsolete or incompatible software or files to remain compatible with the computer's newer hardware or software

The software program VICE, standing for VersatIle Commodore Emulator, is a free and cross platform emulator for Commodore's 8-bit computers. It runs on Linux, Amiga, Unix, MS-DOS, Win32, macOS, OS/2, RISC OS, QNX, GP2X, Pandora, Dingoo A320, Syllable, and BeOS host machines. VICE is free software, released under the GNU General Public License since 2004.

multi-system emulator

Anbox (short for “Android in a Box”) is a free and open-source compatibility layer that allows Android applications to run on Linux distributions by using containerization techniques. Originally introduced by Canonical, Anbox executes Android applications in a lightweight system container, isolated from the host system for security and efficiency.

SIMH is a free and open source, multi-platform multi-system emulator. It is maintained by Bob Supnik, a former DEC engineer and DEC vice president, based on a much older systems emulator called MIMIC.

software technology that encapsulates computer programs from the underlying operating system on which it is executed

pre-configured virtual machine image, ready to run on a hypervisor

Ryujinx is a discontinued free and open-source emulator of the Nintendo Switch. It was first released on February 5, 2018 and supported more than 3,000 games by 2024.

emulator for the Atari 2600 game console

220px|thumb|vMac 0.1.9 running System 1.1 on System 7.5 vMac is a free and open-source Macintosh Plus emulator which is able to run versions of System 1.1 to 7.5.5. It is available for Windows, DOS, OS/2, Mac OS, NeXTSTEP, Linux, Unix, and other platforms. Although vMac has been abandoned, Mini vMac, an improved spinoff of vMac, is still actively developed.

Free Atari ST/STE/TT/Falcon emulator