Or.. How to set up your own desktop arcade on Linux using XMAME...

Once you've installed XMAME on whatever system you use, find the 'roms' directory by typing:

locate xmame | grep roms

assuming your locate database is up to date (you can always go root and type 'updatedb' and wait a while). On Slackware it installed to /usr/share/xmame/roms/ , on Damn Small Linux I have /usr/local/share/xmame/roms/ and so on. If you got a binary package for your system, there might be some roms already installed. These will be '.zip' files, and you should leave them zipped; XMAME knows what to do with them. Start any game in your roms directory by typing:

xmame game

Full Story.