GEM for Linux provides a classic graphical desktop with windows, menus, dialogs & a 68K emulator

GEM for Linux is a classic desktop environment that offers a familiar graphical user interface with windows, menus, and dialogs. It includes a terminal, calculator, and clock, providing essential utilities for users. Applications within GEM share a display server, allowing them to utilize either a Rasta viewer or a native Linux framebuffer display.

To run GEM, a Linux operating system is required, along with several development tools such as GCC/G++, GNU Make, CMake 3.20 or higher, Git, Python 3, pkg-config, SDL2 development files, and ImageMagick. The build process downloads and verifies a specific version of the Rasta and Musashi source archives to ensure consistency across builds.

Once the build is complete, users can choose to run GEM in three different ways: by using the 'make container' command for a containerized build, by using Docker for building and testing, or by following a more traditional approach with GNU Make instead of the compiler dependencies. The first build of GEM requires an internet connection to download the necessary components.

Detailed instructions for the build process can be found in the provided build guide. GEM supports starting the desktop by executing specific commands in separate terminal windows, with each command needing to wait for the previous one to report that it is listening before proceeding. Alternatively, users can press F5 within GEM to launch both the desktop environment and all sample applications at once.

For developers, GEM can be integrated with the Visual Studio Code (VS Code) integrated development environment, providing a seamless workflow for building and testing SDK applications. To install GEM natively, users must copy the complete 'bin/gemix' directory to their installation location, such as /opt/gemix. During installation, GEM requires access to the Linux framebuffer and input devices.

Following the installation and startup guide will guide users through selecting appropriate devices, setting resource paths, and launching the installed desktop environment.