Lobsters retrocomputing - 07 Sep 2026

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GEM for Linux brings the classic GEM graphical environment to modern Linux. It

provides the GEM Desktop, windows, menus and dialogs together with a file

manager, terminal, document tools and the Stout Atari executable runner.

GEM can run in a Rasta viewer on a hosted development machine, or directly on

a Linux framebuffer with keyboard and mouse input from the Linux text console.

See What's new for recent changes. Bundled applications are

under src/apps/; Gemread is a read-only document viewer licensed under

AGPL-3.0-or-later. It uses MuPDF for PDF, XPS/OpenXPS, EPUB, MOBI, FB2, CBZ and

CBT documents.

Per-component settings and persistent Desktop locations use ordinary text

files described in the configuration guide.

Build

Requires Linux, GCC/G++, GNU Make, CMake 3.20+, Git, Python 3, pkg-config,

SDL2 development files and ImageMagick. The build downloads and verifies

pinned Rasta, Musashi, MuPDF and CEF archives into ignored build/ storage.

Subsequent builds reuse them; no separate checkouts are needed.

From the repository root:

make

make tests # optional; results in docs/tests/LATEST.md

Alternatively, make container builds and tests using Docker; the host needs

Docker and GNU Make instead of the compiler dependencies. The first build

needs internet access. See the build guide.

Run with Rasta

Start these commands in three separate terminals, in order. Wait for gemd

to report that it is listening before starting the desktop:

./bin/tools/rasta --inverse off --cursor off --bpp 32 --port 5000

./bin/core/gemd

./bin/apps/desktop

Alternatively, press F5 with GEM - Desktop and Terminal in VS Code to

start those two applications together. See the

hosted development guide for setup and the

samples guide for SDK builds.

Run on a Linux framebuffer

For a text-console system with Linux framebuffer and evdev support, build the

native package:

Copy the complete bin/gemix directory to install it elsewhere. See the

native Linux guide for device selection,

permissions and deployment configuration.

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Original: https://github.com/triglav-os/gem