Dolphin emulator
From Gentoo Wiki
Not to be confused with KDE’s file manager.
Dolphin is an emulator for two recent Nintendo video game consoles: the GameCube and the Wii.
Installation
USE flags
USE flags for games-emulation/dolphin Gamecube and Wii game emulator
+evdev
|
Enable evdev input support |
+gui
|
Enable support for a graphical user interface |
alsa
|
Add support for media-libs/alsa-lib (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) |
bluetooth
|
Enable Bluetooth Support |
discord-presence
|
Enables Discord Rich Presence, show the current game on Discord |
doc
|
Add extra documentation (API, Javadoc, etc). It is recommended to enable per package instead of globally |
egl
|
Enable EGL (Embedded-System Graphics Library, interfacing between windowing system and OpenGL/GLES) support |
ffmpeg
|
Enable ffmpeg/libav-based audio/video codec support |
llvm
|
Enables LLVM support, for disassembly |
log
|
Increase logging output |
mgba
|
Enables GBA controllers emulation using libmgba. |
profile
|
Add support for software performance analysis (will likely vary from ebuild to ebuild) |
pulseaudio
|
Add sound server support via media-libs/libpulse (may be PulseAudio or PipeWire) |
sdl
|
Add support for Simple Direct Layer (media library) |
systemd
|
Enable use of systemd-specific libraries and features like socket activation or session tracking |
telemetry
|
Send anonymized usage information to upstream so they can better understand our users |
test
|
Enable dependencies and/or preparations necessary to run tests (usually controlled by FEATURES=test but can be toggled independently) |
upnp
|
Enable UPnP port mapping support |
vulkan
|
Add support for 3D graphics and computing via the Vulkan cross-platform API |
Emerge
Emerge Dolphin:
root #emerge --ask games-emulation/dolphinTroubleshooting
Unable to start an emulation session on Wayland
Important
This workaround should not be used as upstream might support Wayland later and has already implemented the workaround within code with release 2506. In prior releases, the workaround is already defined in desktop file. See bug #956364.
This workaround should not be used as upstream might support Wayland later and has already implemented the workaround within code with release 2506. In prior releases, the workaround is already defined in desktop file. See bug #956364.
Dolphin does not yet (as of 2025-06-06 with releases 2503 and 2506) directly support Wayland: dolphin-emu fails to initialize OpenGL or Vulkan with QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland
So trying to start an emulation session under a Wayland compositor can result in errors such as "Failed to create Vulkan surface", "Failed to initialize video backend" or "Failed to create OpenGL window".
As workarounds:
- for releases 2506 and later, nothing to do, workaround is within code;
- for releases prior 2506, either:
- use desktop file containing environment variable QT_QPA_PLATFORM set to
xcb; - run Dolphin explicitly with environment variable QT_QPA_PLATFORM set to
xcb.
- use desktop file containing environment variable QT_QPA_PLATFORM set to
user $env QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb dolphin-emu