Building for Linux

Prerequisites

• git
• curl
• cmake, version 3.13 or newer for Dolphin 5.0-16995 and newer.
• C++ compiler such as gcc, with C++20 support for Dolphin 5.0-17123 and newer.

Additional Dependencies Examples

For Ubuntu (22.04 and up)/Debian with Dolphin versions ~5.0-13001 or newer

Ubuntu 18.04 and 20.04 users, please install QT6 from source or an outside repo. One way to do so is to add this PPA by running sudo add-apt-repository ppa:okirby/qt6-backports && sudo apt update before running the next command.

sudo apt install build-essential git cmake ffmpeg libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libavutil-dev libswscale-dev libevdev-dev libusb-1.0-0-dev libxrandr-dev libxi-dev libpangocairo-1.0-0 qt6-base-private-dev libqt6svg6-dev libbluetooth-dev libasound2-dev libpulse-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev

sudo apt install libudev-dev libsystemd-dev || sudo apt install libeudev-dev #distros without systemd like AntiX must use eudev instead

Fedora:

sudo dnf install vulkan-loader vulkan-loader-devel cmake git gcc-c++ libXext-devel libgudev qt6-qtbase-devel qt6-qtbase-private-devel qt6-qtsvg-devel systemd-devel openal-soft-devel libevdev-devel libao-devel SOIL-devel libXrandr-devel pulseaudio-libs-devel bluez-libs-devel libusb1-devel libXi-devel

Arch:

see https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/dolphin-emu-git?all_deps=1#pkgdeps

(!WIP) Chrome/Chromium OS (via Chromebrew):

crew install binutils wayland cmake gcc buildessential git libx11 pkg-config libxi libxext qtbase qtwayland mesa libxfixes libxxf86vm libusb libdrm libxrandr gettext linuxheaders enet libxshmfence libunwind lm_sensors elfutils patchelf vulkan_icd_loader

#Intel hardware
crew install xorg_intel_driver

#Nvidia hardware
crew install xorg_nouveau_driver

Checkout Dolphin

1. git clone https://github.com/dolphin-emu/dolphin
2. cd dolphin

Add necessary submodules and check for new commits

git -c submodule."Externals/Qt".update=none \
-c submodule."Externals/FFmpeg-bin".update=none \
-c submodule."Externals/libadrenotools".update=none \
submodule update --init --recursive \
&& git pull --recurse-submodules

Building

If your system has an old compiler in its system repos, a higher version can be specified with build flags. For example, Ubuntu 18.04 users should install gcc-11 from something like this PPA and then instead of cmake .. type cmake .. -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=gcc-11 -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=g++-11 during the build process.

Global Build (if unsure, use this option)

mkdir build && cd build

cmake ..

make -j$(nproc)

sudo make install #optional, to install Dolphin

Local Build

mkdir build && cd build

cmake .. -DLINUX_LOCAL_DEV=true

make -j$(nproc)

ln -s ../../Data/Sys Binaries/

Portable Build

mkdir build && cd build

cmake .. -DLINUX_LOCAL_DEV=true

make -j$(nproc)

cp -r ../Data/Sys/ Binaries/

touch Binaries/portable.txt

Distributable .deb Package

following the instructions from the PR where this feature was implemented:

sudo apt install dpkg-dev file

mkdir build && cd build

cmake .. -DCPACK_PACKAGE_CONTACT="Your Name Here" .. #you're responsible for what you distribute

make -j$(nproc)

cpack -G DEB

Externally Managed Packages

Dolphin maintains official Flatpak repositories for both releases and development builds. Additionally, on some distributions of Linux, package maintainers provide unofficial, unmodified builds of Dolphin. These are listed below:

• Debian LTS (Bullseye), Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat), and older use a highly outdated build from 2016. Do not install Dolphin Emulator from APT on these versions!
• Debian Stable (Bookworm), Ubuntu 24.10 (Oracular Oriole), and newer have recent release versions of Dolphin, though they can still become outdated due to software versions being mostly frozen when distribution versions release.
• Arch Linux
• Fedora follows the latest release version but isn't always quite caught up with the most recent
• OpenSUSE
• Gentoo
• Flatpak is updated with the latest release versions - Steam Deck users may recognize this as the version distributed in the desktop mode's Discover store

Troubleshooting

• The compiler will normally tell you what's going on if you run into an error. Read the error messages closely and look them up verbatim to see if it's something missing on your system and/or a typo in recent Dolphin commits.
• QT5 support has been officially been deprecated by the Dolphin development team. While it's still technically possible to build using QT5, as of 5.0-17764 the minimum requirement was raised to 5.15. It's recommended to install the proper QT6 dependencies instead - by the time you're reading this, it's possible that not even 5.15 works anymore.
  • That being said, there is a known bug as of QT 6.3+ where mouse clicks don't work on Linux. No one's really sure why yet. This can be worked around by setting QT_XCB_NO_XI2=1. As an example, you can just run Dolphin using the QT_XCB_NO_XI2=1 dolphin-emu command in a terminal. Another easy way to accomplish this would be to install menulibre from your package manager, open it and use it to modify Dolphin's desktop file, and change the Command to read something like env QT_XCB_NO_XI2=1 QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb dolphin-emu. Although it would be more proper to set this as an environment variable.
• Need more speed? As an alternative to cmake .. during the build process, type cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS=-march=native -DCMAKE_C_FLAGS=-march=native instead. The resulting build will be optimized specifically for YOUR processor! The difference is more noticeable the weaker your computer is. Note that this may result in longer compile times, and the binaries you build will almost certainly be unusable on any computer besides your own. AUR users of *-git packages can get a similar effect by following https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/makepkg#Building_optimized_binaries