
  MEKA for UN*X - Documentation
 ===============================

 Note: please read the main documentation (MEKA.TXT) for everything
 that generally apply to MEKA and all its versions. This file covers
 specific aspects of the UN*X versions.

 Since years, I have working builds of MEKA for GNU/Linux and NetBSD,
 that I sometimes played with at school. Several people asked me in
 the past, and more recently, to release UN*X builds.

 Here is a GNU/Linux build to begin.
 I've build it on a recently installed RedHat system, and it was
 successfully tested on a recent Debian as well.

 Please however keep in mind, that:
  - It is crappy.
  - It may or not works on your system.
  - Now that sources are available, you can help ;)
    See development forum: 
    http://www.smspower.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=7

 I am not willing to spend much time maintaining UN*X releases yet.
 Those releases are for people who nicely asked for MEKA being available 
 on communist operating systems :) and I have hope that it can be useful. 
 Yet, I just don't have much time to work on supporting it. I'm not 
 against you users, but please understand that I'm currently in a very 
 busy situation and targetting UN*X for my emulator is not a priority.

 I am welcoming anyone to help, though.
 And, I will do my best to consider those mails:
  - "I cannot get it to work, but you may be able to fix it by
     doing xxx or xxx."
  - "I cannot get it to work. Unfortunately, I cannot help you
     with technical suggestion but I'll give you plenty of
     information and it may guide you to a solution."
  - "I have a smart suggestion to improve the program: xxx."

 Technical notes

 - Security

   UN*X users are usually paranoid about security, so let me get straight to
   the point: MEKA has MANY potentially unsecure points, including, but not
   limited to, overflowable buffers, format string bugs, integer overflow bugs, 
   race condition and everything bad you can think about.
   
   Do NOT setuid it, and do NOT let other users access to your configuration
   files unless you trust them. Generally speaking, MEKA is to be used by the
   local user and main owner of the computer.
   Being logged as root helps since some X Window extension seems to be only
   available as root (eg: DGA), making the whole thing even more scary and
   probably also more cool to deal with!

 - Video

   MEKA relies on palettized video modes which are not well supported on 
   some newer videocard/drivers combos. Thus, you may (or not) experience 
   slowdowns, tearing, snow or wrong colors with some videocard/drivers.
   Best performance can be obtained by setting your X Window server to 8-bit
   video mode, or setting up MEKA to switch to such mode (often using an
   X extension, such as DGA).

 - Sound

   Out of what I was able to test, I got a choppy and 1 second retarded
   sound output. It may works better on some systems / configuration, and
   I'd be glad to hear reports about that.
   This is due to crappy sound code on the software side. This problem
   is being addressed.

 - Inputs

   Inputs sources other than keyboard or mouse were not tested.
   Please report successes or failures.

 - Other things

   I'm considering to find an UN*X maintainer.
   If you are fairly skilled, very familiar with multimedia technology on
   any x86 based UN*X like system (GNU/Linux, BSD systems, etc.) and
   interested in improving MEKA, please e-mail me about it.

   
Thanks for your reading,

Omar Cornut
