Installation on Linux and UNIX Systems

This page guides you through the steps for getting PrBoom running on UNIX and Linux systems.

Steps

1. Install the PrBoom program and required libraries - Please see the most appropriate instructions depending on your system distribution:

   • Linux/x86 RPM based distros (Redhat, Mandrake, ...)
   • Debian (and derivatives)
   • FreeBSD (may be appropriate for other BSDs)
   • Generic UNIX (anything else)
2. Getting a Doom IWAD
3. Getting music (optional).

Compiling with OpenGL support

I didn't write the OpenGL stuff, nor do I have a good 3D card to test with, so I don't use this nor know much about it. That said, it did work for me last time I tried it.

The RPM distribution of PrBoom doesn't support this, so you must compile from source. Follow the instructions below relevant to your distribution, but add the parameter --enable-gl when you run ./configure. You'll need Mesa installed.

I don't suggest using the OpenGL stuff unless you're already familiar with Doom and PrBoom.

We got reports that it works with XFree 4.x

Linux/x86 RPM based distributions

Several of the main desktop Linux distributions ship with and install all the required libraries by default. Both RedHat 7.2 and Mandrake 8.1 come with all the required libraries. So you can just grab the RPM of PrBoom, prboom-2.2.4-1.i386.rpm, and install it with the following command (as root):

rpm -ivh prboom-2.2.4-1.i386.rpm

You can then run PrBoom as /usr/games/prboom (or just prboom if the games are in your PATH).

If you use an older distribution, you will need to install the required SDL libraries first. We test and recommend the following RPM's to use with PrBoom:

• SDL-1.2.0-1.i386.rpm.
• SDL_mixer-1.2.0-1.i386.rpm.
• SDL_net-1.2.0-1.i386.rpm.

To install these, you use rpm. E.g. if you downloaded all of the above RPMs into one directory, cd to that directory and run rpm -ivh *.rpm. You can then install the PrBoom RPM itself as above.

Notes:

• There may be newer versions of some of these libraries available from their websites; anything in the 1.2 series should work fine, let us know if not.
• If you are using a partiularly stripped down setup, you might need to install a few more RPMs required by these ones. They should be on your distribution CDs.
• No source RPM (SRPM) is provided for PrBoom. The RPM is built from the source tarball unmodified: see the INSTALL file in the source tarball for details.
• If you have information on installing PrBoom on other distributions, if there were any special steps required (or if there weren't!), let us know, and I'll update the instructions here.

Debian

Debian unstable contains a packaged version of PrBoom, which should be fairly up-to-date.

Alteratively, you can build the latest PrBoom from source on Debian very easily. Install the libsdl1.2, libsdl-mixer1.2 and libsdl-net1.2 packages and the corresponding -dev versions - these are all available in Debian woody and above (and should compile from source fine for potato). Get the prboom source code prboom-2.2.4.tar.gz from our download page, extract, and then follow the included INSTALL instructions.

FreeBSD

I've tested on FreeBSD 4.1-STABLE. The ports tree contains packages of most of the stuff you need. Make the following ports:

• devel/sdl-devel
• audio/sdl_mixer (requires audio/smpeg)

You also need the SDL_net library, which you can get from it's homepage. Note that because the sdl-devel port installs in a strange directory, you'll need to ln -s ../SDL/SDL_net.h /usr/local/include/SDL11/SDL_net.h or something similar.

Finally, get prboom-2.2.4.tar.gz the PrBoom source, extract, and follow the included INSTALL instructions.

Generic UNIX

You need to get and install the following libraries:

• SDL 1.2.x, from the SDL 1.2 download page.
• SDL_mixer, from its home page. You might need to compile and install SMPEG first to compile this, but I think that recent versions do not require SMPEG (it provides mp3 music support I think, which is not needed for PrBoom).
• SDL_net, from its home page.

Then get prboom-2.2.4.tar.gz the PrBoom source, extract, and follow the included INSTALL instructions.

In previous releases, a symbol conflict occured on some platforms. This should not happen anymore. Let us know if you have to make any changes to get it to compile on common platforms.

Download page

Download either the RPM or the tarball here. It's possible that the version numbers on this page may not be up to date. You can figure it out :-).

Getting a Doom IWAD

The IWAD is the main data file containing the graphics and levels for Doom. You need one to use PrBoom. If you have a copy of one of the original Doom games, copy your Doom, Doom 2, Ultimate Doom or Final Doom IWAD (doom.wad, doom2.wad, tnt.wad or plutonia.wad) to /usr/local/share/games/doom/. Or, if you don't have any of those, use the shareware IWAD, which you can get from http://www.doomworld.com/ or http://www.idsoftware.com/.

Music

The SDL_mixer library used by PrBoom supports software MIDI music synthesis. If you want to hear the Doom music, you need a set of Timidity instrument patches. There are various ways to get these:

• Mandrake includes a timidity-instruments package (installed by default I think, if not use urpmi timidity-instruments).
• Other RPM based systems can look for a package.
• Debian includes a package timidity-patches.
• Everyone else, do a web search for timidity patch sets, there are plenty around. Really good but quite big are the Eawpatches.

These patch sets are a large download (>5megs).

SDL_mixer does not currently support hardware MIDI synthesis on UNIX systems. We plan to nag the SDL developers about this. If you want it, you nag them too :-).