I've tried RetroPie, RecalBox, and Batocera at various points on my Pi4-based emulation console and Pi-Zero based handheld, but finally settled on Lakka (not mentioned in the article). It's...
I've tried RetroPie, RecalBox, and Batocera at various points on my Pi4-based emulation console and Pi-Zero based handheld, but finally settled on Lakka (not mentioned in the article). It's essentially a hyper-focused linux distro whose sole purpose is to run stock RetroArch (also not mentioned in the article, but it's the same emulation backend used by all of those other options).
I found on all those other options that I wasted more time fine-tuning all of the metadata on my collection like thumbnails, descriptions, etc. than I did actually playing games. With Lakka that's not a problem because it doesn't support most of that stuff anyway--it's just a PS3-like menu interface with text-based lists of your games for each system. It's maybe not as pretty or noob-friendly but it's perfect for me.
I sort of wish there was just a Retroarch distro for Raspberry Pi with the PS3-style interface that RetroArch has on PC platforms (closer to Lakka). That's what I wind up using Emulation Station...
I sort of wish there was just a Retroarch distro for Raspberry Pi with the PS3-style interface that RetroArch has on PC platforms (closer to Lakka). That's what I wind up using Emulation Station via RetroPie as anyway, but I actually prefer having the raspbian backend and how they generally do things. I felt locked out of Lakka.
EDIT: Derp, I just realized that Lakka is the official distro, but my want still stands.
Yeah that is the one annoying caveat with Lakka--making any kind of persistent change to the OS itself can only be done in a few ways using their overlay filesystem stuff, unless you're willing to...
Yeah that is the one annoying caveat with Lakka--making any kind of persistent change to the OS itself can only be done in a few ways using their overlay filesystem stuff, unless you're willing to rebuild the whole thing from source to bake your changes into the system image.
I took a stab once at building an Arch Linux ARM-based system that had the bare minimum packages installed to load RetroArch up at boot, but was never able to get it working.
I've got a 4 I'm not using for much and want to experiment with this. Two things I would do differently: A software-moderated power switch and USB boot to prevent corruption should the power cut....
I've got a 4 I'm not using for much and want to experiment with this. Two things I would do differently: A software-moderated power switch and USB boot to prevent corruption should the power cut. That's what I did for my Kintaro SNES case Retropie build, but I am now very curious about the current state of affairs from a practical sense.
Somewhat off-topic, but is anyone here hoping to make their eventual Steam Deck a one-stop emulation shop? RetroArch is already on Steam, so I feel like it will be pretty trivial to install that...
Somewhat off-topic, but is anyone here hoping to make their eventual Steam Deck a one-stop emulation shop? RetroArch is already on Steam, so I feel like it will be pretty trivial to install that and load up some games.
I'm loving the idea of having a big chunk of the history of gaming available in a convenient handheld.
I've tried RetroPie, RecalBox, and Batocera at various points on my Pi4-based emulation console and Pi-Zero based handheld, but finally settled on Lakka (not mentioned in the article). It's essentially a hyper-focused linux distro whose sole purpose is to run stock RetroArch (also not mentioned in the article, but it's the same emulation backend used by all of those other options).
I found on all those other options that I wasted more time fine-tuning all of the metadata on my collection like thumbnails, descriptions, etc. than I did actually playing games. With Lakka that's not a problem because it doesn't support most of that stuff anyway--it's just a PS3-like menu interface with text-based lists of your games for each system. It's maybe not as pretty or noob-friendly but it's perfect for me.
I sort of wish there was just a Retroarch distro for Raspberry Pi with the PS3-style interface that RetroArch has on PC platforms (closer to Lakka). That's what I wind up using Emulation Station via RetroPie as anyway, but I actually prefer having the raspbian backend and how they generally do things. I felt locked out of Lakka.
EDIT: Derp, I just realized that Lakka is the official distro, but my want still stands.
Yeah that is the one annoying caveat with Lakka--making any kind of persistent change to the OS itself can only be done in a few ways using their overlay filesystem stuff, unless you're willing to rebuild the whole thing from source to bake your changes into the system image.
I took a stab once at building an Arch Linux ARM-based system that had the bare minimum packages installed to load RetroArch up at boot, but was never able to get it working.
I've got a 4 I'm not using for much and want to experiment with this. Two things I would do differently: A software-moderated power switch and USB boot to prevent corruption should the power cut. That's what I did for my Kintaro SNES case Retropie build, but I am now very curious about the current state of affairs from a practical sense.
Somewhat off-topic, but is anyone here hoping to make their eventual Steam Deck a one-stop emulation shop? RetroArch is already on Steam, so I feel like it will be pretty trivial to install that and load up some games.
I'm loving the idea of having a big chunk of the history of gaming available in a convenient handheld.