Most gaming OS distributions ship emulators as pre-built binaries, AppImages, or Flatpaks pulled from wherever they could find them. HippOS compiles every emulator from upstream source as part of the OS build. The emulator lineup and the OS are versioned together.

What that means in practice

Every emulator binary is built against the exact library versions in the HippOS runtime. No compatibility shims, no bundled runtimes that shadow the system. When you launch Dolphin or RPCS3, you’re running a binary that was compiled against the same Mesa, libvulkan, and libc that the rest of the OS uses.

Build reproducibility is a property of the whole image, not just the OS base.

The current lineup

HippOS ships emulators across most platforms you’d expect:

• Nintendo: melonDS (DS), Azahar (3DS), Dolphin (Wii/GC), Eden (Wii U), Ryujinx (Switch)
• Sony: DuckStation (PS1), PCSX2 (PS2), PPSSPP (PSP), Vita3K (PS Vita), RPCS3 (PS3), shadPS4 (PS4)
• Microsoft: xemu (Xbox), Xenia (Xbox 360)
• Sega: Supermodel (Model 3), redream (Dreamcast), flycast (Dreamcast)
• Classic: MAME, FBNeo, ScummVM, DOSBox Staging, and many more

RetroArch is also included for cores that don’t have a strong standalone option.

Wrappers, not patched binaries

Each emulator launches through a thin wrapper that sets up the right environment: correct HOME, XDG paths pointing at /userdata, display variables. The emulator binaries themselves are unmodified upstream builds. When an emulator updates, HippOS rebuilds it — no downstream patching to maintain.