Free rom software for linux

ROMBrowser project is a tool for organizing emulator ROMs.
It will identify rom files by their CRC, give information about their characteristics (game title, parent rom, etc), and organize those ROMs with different filters.
If you like to play with emulation and emulators, you know the pain of keeping track of your thousands of ROM files, not to mention figuring out what it is youve just downloaded. Thats what ROMBrowser is for. Eventually I hope to have a system that works somewhat like romcenter, but is java based and GPLd.
I also am planning on developing a schema for storing meta-data related to ROM files. There are currently several databases out there that have information about ROM files, usually keyed by the files CRC32. Part of the ROMBrowser project will be to develop an open standard for that kind of data (probably an XML DTD) and a plan for the distributed classification of ROM files, so users can classify unknown ROMs and distribute that information.
Enhancements:
- Added Super Nintendo rom handler for SMC files. It doesnt handle interleaved files yet.
- Separated out datafiles from main distribution, added credits tag to xml database, to give credit to the rom database maintainers (just using conversions of cowerings goodtools for now).
- Changed rom info viewer to table view. Added ability to modify rom data, changes will be saved in knownfiles.xml
- Changed how file searching works, now only files that have romhandlers (nes and smc currently) get processed, all others are ignored.
- Made file converter work better for converting romcenter dat files (use net.sourceforge.rombrowser.util.ROMDatabaseFileConverter
- Deleting specific roms from the treeview will remove them from knownfiles, and will also delete them from the filesystem if delete-on-remove is true.
- Deleting folders from the treeview will still not remove their child entries from knowfiles or delete the foders or their children.
- Changed the way rominfo files are handled, now if the datafile property has colons in it, it will treat it as a list of datafiles, eg: "goodnes.xml.gz:goodsnes.xml.gz" would look for both goodnes and goodsnes in the rombrowser home folder

genromfs project can create romfs images.
romfs is a space-efficient, small, read-only filesystem originally for Linux and used by some Linux based projects. It is a block-based filesystem, that means it makes use of block (or sector) accessible storage driver (like disks, CDs, ROM drives). It is part of stock Linux kernels since about version 2.1.21 (about January, 1997). All current (2.4--2.6) kernel sources contain support for romfs, but depending on the distributor, it might not have been compiled in.
A working Linux system requires the kernel, and at least some programs running, which obviously needs a filesystem too. Most Linux disk filesystems are designed to be high performance, supporting all POSIX features, sometimes elaborate recovery on crashes (journaling), and that usually makes them quite heavy-weight, and thus often inappropriate in some special purposes.
romfs makes two shortcuts: first, its read-only, you cant simply use your disk if its a romfs disk, you must build its image beforehand. Second, it stores only the absolute minimum required from a filing system. No modification dates, no unix permissions.
Enhancements:
- Compilation fixes were made for the Cygwin platform, and there is less dependence on the ntohl() implementation.
- A segfault is now avoided with nonexistent directories.
- The acceptable names for "fake" device names were made to include the "-", "_", and "+" characters.

The Romalizer project is a Tcl script to analyze your MAME roms and report errors.
The ROMalizer is a Tcl script that examines your .zip files for MAME ROMs and lets you know if you have any extra data in them. It can also report incorrect filenames, CRCs, etc.
Enhancements:
- romalizer will no longer move the zipfiles it has fixed into your roms directory unless you specify the -M option. This will allow you to run romalizer as a normal user on a roms filesystem that is only writable by root or some other games administrator. If you use the -M option, romalzier will back up your old roms into the working directory as usual, if the -M option is not used, the new (fixed) roms will be located in the working directory.
- romalizer now fully supports two new styles of merging your roms. You may now use the -g or -G options to tell romalizer to use one of these new merging formats. When -g is used, romalizer will merge all clones into a single zip file. When -G is used, romalizer will create clone zip files that are capable of being run independantly of the parent romset. I have tested these new merging features on my pacman romset and it works beautifully, however more testing probably needs to be done on a complete romset for these options.
- neogeo games are now supported, romalizer will just ignore any CRC that matches 354029fc (ng-sfix.rom), 9036d879 (neo-geo.rom), and 97cf998b (ng-sm1.rom). Thus neogeo roms are now fully supported except for these 3 which should be placed in a file called neogeo.zip.
- romalizer requires usage of UnZip version 5.41 or higher due to a Y2K bug in UnZip. This patch will now check your unzip version and abort if you do not have a recent version of UnZip.

Reply-o-Matic is a highly configurable and secure auto-reply software, to be used in conjunction with any Mail Delivery/Transfer Agent or local delivery agent. Reply-o-Matic provides an easy, uniform way to autoreply to email messages.
Enhancements:
- Adding new flag (-e), allowing for the definition of the charset of the contents of -s and -b.
- NOTICE: rom does not validate the provided charset.

Etherboot project is a software package for creating ROM images that can download code over an Ethernet network to be executed on an x86 computer.
Many network adapters have a socket where a ROM chip can be installed. Etherboot is code that can be put in such a ROM. Etherboot is normally used for for booting PCs diskless. This is useful in various situations, for example:
- An X-terminal.
- Clusters of compute servers.
- Routers.
- Various kinds of remote servers, e.g. a tape drive server that can be accessed with the RMT protocol.
- Machines doing tasks in environments unfriendly to disks.
- A user platform where remote partitions are mounted over the network and you are willing to accept the lower speed compared to disk.
- Maintaining software for a cluster of equally configured workstations centrally.
Etherboot can boot computers faster than from a disk because there are no delays in spinning up disks, etc. A moments calculation will show that even with a 10Mbit Ethernet, sending a 500kB kernel will take only a couple of seconds typically. With 100Mbit Ethernet it gets even better.
Compared to booting from solid-state devices, e.g. Flash disks, Etherboot has the advantage of centralising software adminstration, the tradeoff being the dependence on a server. This can be partly alleviated by providing redundant servers.
Etherboot can work with RAM disks, NFS filesystems, or even local disks, if desired. Its a component technology and can be combined with other technologies to do things the way you want.
Etherboot is usually used to load Linux, FreeBSD or DOS. However the protocol and boot file formats are general, so there is no reason why it could not be used to load arbitrary images to a PC, including other OSes.
Etherboot is Open Source under the GNU General Public License Version 2 (GPL2).
The components needed by Etherboot are:
- A bootstrap loader, usually in an EPROM on a network card, or installed in the flash BIOS, but could be put anywhere in the address space the BIOS probes in. For testing this could be put on a floppy disk or a hard disk partition. Some configurations may even be always run from a floppy disk (e.g. temporary testing setups or pedagogic uses).
- A DHCP or bootp server, for returning an IP address and other information when sent a MAC (Ethernet card) address.
- A tftp server, for sending the kernel images and other files required in the boot process. Alternatively, Etherboot can boot from an NFS mount.
- A Linux or FreeBSD kernel.
- Optionally, a NFS server, for providing the disk partitions that will be mounted if Linux or FreeBSD is being booted.
- Optionally, a RAM disk contained in the loaded image. This can be the initial RAM disk if desired.
- Software tools for building the download image, and tools for debugging.
Enhancements:
- This production release should now compile with gcc 4.x.
- In addition, a number of drivers have been updated, including e1000, MCP51 and MCP55 (nvidia), pcnet32, natsemi, sis900, and tg3.
- NetXtreme II cards are now supported.

AdvanceCOMP is a collection of recompression utilities for your .ZIP archives, .PNG snapshots, .MNG video clips and .GZ files.
Its mainly intended for recompressing your rom, snapshot and clip collection of emulated games.
Main features:
- Recompress ZIP, GZ, PNG and MNG files using the Deflate 7-Zip implementation.
- Recompress MNG files using Delta and Move optimization.
Enhancements:
- This release fixed a lot of bugs for 64-bit platforms.

GNOME FCE Ultra (also known as gfceu) is an interface for the popular Nintendo Emulator, FCE Ultra. GNOME FCE Ultra is designed for the GNOME desktop, and allows the user to easily play NES ROM images.
Main features:
- Network play
- Custom input configuration
- Fullscreen support
- Full sound support
- High compatibility and accurate emulation