title: Linux/UNIX Installation
This page guides you through the steps for getting PrBoom running on UNIX and Linux systems.
Install the PrBoom program and required libraries - Please see the most appropriate instructions depending on your system distribution:
Several of the main desktop Linux distributions ship with and install all the
required libraries by default. So you can just grab the RPM of PrBoom,
prboom-2.4.5-1.i386.rpm
, and install it with the following
command (as root):
rpm -ivh prboom-2.4.5-1.i386.rpm
You can then run PrBoom as
/usr/games/prboom
(or just prboom
if the games are in
your PATH
).
Notes:
INSTALL
file in the source
tarball for details.Build the latest PrBoom from source — this is easy to do
on Debian. Install the libsdl1.2-dev, libsdl-mixer1.2-dev and libsdl-net1.2-dev packages — these are all available in Debian woody and above. Get the prboom source
code prboom-2.4.5.tar.gz
from our download page, extract, and then follow
the included INSTALL
instructions.
If you have an Athlon 64 (aka amd64 or x86_64) system, the version of SDL_mixer shipped with Debian and Ubuntu has some bugs that affect music playback. You may want to get the source to the libsdl-mixer1.2 package and recompile it with the patch, or just install a patched .deb, or get SDL_mixer 1.2.7 or later and install that instead.
I have tested on various FreeBSD versions. The ports tree contains packages of the stuff you need. Make the following ports:
Finally, get prboom-2.4.5.tar.gz
the PrBoom
source, extract, and follow the included INSTALL
instructions.
You need to get and install the following libraries:
Then get prboom-2.4.5.tar.gz
the PrBoom
source, extract, and follow the included INSTALL
instructions.
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 :-).
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/.
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. Get the timidity.tar.gz
from the bottom of the SDL_mixer page, and extract in /usr/local/lib
. You may need to symlink /usr/local/lib/timidity/timidity.cfg
to /etc/timidity
— see the console output from PrBoom to see where it is looking for this file.