Retropie \ Batocera \ Lakka \ Recalbox like distro or interface?

[SNESFAN]

One of the goals of the pandora project, and I remember hearing ED boast about it quite a bit, was the whole 'more than a computer' and alternatively, 'more than a game console' aspect of the pandora. Well, with the explosion of single board computers that appeared since the pandora's release, lots of OS centric solution have come up, matured, and the field is painted with quite the landscape of options, and to be completely honest much nicer than what came shipped on the pandora. Seeing as the pyra is in the last legs of development and consumers should start getting theirs relatively soon (2 months-ish) I feel now might be as good of time as any to explore the game console aspect of the pyra.

Most/all of the below distro's are arm based and are generally seen as the 'best' for turning your ARM device into a emulation game console. Some have built in options to get the full desktop experience, whereas others can be easily modded to create a menu option to pull up a desktop manager.

Download - RetroPie

Contents1 Pre-made images for the Raspberry Pi1.1 BerryBoot2 Installing on top of an existing OS2.1 Raspbian on a Raspberry Pi2.2 Debian / Ubuntu on a PC2.3 Ubuntu on an ODroid-C1/C22.4 Ubuntu on an ODroid-XU3/XU43 PetRockBlock Downloads Pre-made images for the Raspberry Pi The latest pre-made...

retropie.org.uk

batocera.linux

Only Cores That Matter

batocera.org

Get Lakka

Lakka is a lightweight Linux distribution based on RetroArch that transforms a small computer like a Raspberry Pi into a full blown retrogaming console.

www.lakka.tv

Recalbox Download - Channel selection

Download and install Recalbox on your Raspberry Pi, PC, handheld console or ODROID!

archive.recalbox.com

Download RetrOrangePi

Download RetrOrangePi.

www.retrorangepi.org

My personal preference is on batocera as I recently got a odroid go advance running that distro and I have to say, it's rather slick with integrated emulator options and system options built into the main gui. Has autodiscover framework built in and I think could be adapted with a bit of work to utilize the .pnd system. The other distro's aren't bad and have used them off/on with other devices and single board computers.

Just wanted to see people's opinions on if that would be a good route to go, and if so which distro most people preference.

 

[levi]

For the Pyra? For a full blown computer? God no. For a cheap board you leave connected to your spare tv is one thing, but for something that had intrisic use not always related to gaming I'm not convinced.

For Pandora we had minimenu for people who wanted a more console-like experience, but it doesn't sound like anyone's doing that for Pyra. Personally I found minimenu too limiting anyway, although there do appear to be a few pandora users who never used anything else.

 

[SNESFAN]

You can access the desktop manager through a menu option or even have the desktop manager as the default interface. I see something like this to be identical to minimenu just much better.

Also because as you say, nobody is talking about revamping minimenu, I think this should be considered. I was one of those persons who wanted a more console-like experience.

 

[levi]

I can't find any videos on youtube showing it dropping through to a DE, and can't really understand how it would work if that were the default interface. Another question is, are any of these available from debian?

 

[SNESFAN]

An example of the desktop envrionment switch on a retrostone 2 below. There's an icon at the bottom of the desktop envrionment that switches you back to the "emulationstation" environment. Make a script to change boot parameters depending on preference similar to how minimenu works, probably could even use a lot of the same script that's already in place on the pandora. EDIT: also another explaining a bit more of the feature.


EDIT: They're all most are debian based (batocera looks to be buildroot) and for example retropie, here are instructions on how to build for debian and like os's https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Debian/

Some of the other distros are a little more custom and like batocera has the OS on one partition in an image file while settings/changes are stored in a user share (or sdcard media?), and would think maybe a chroot between batocera and debian could be used so they can run without breaking each other, but maybe not depending on how far from base debian they go.

 

[levi]

Ah, thanks for that. I guess that second video is from an earlier stage in development.

This might be worth investigating, especially if others are interested. I don't know how well the build in emulator cores will build on the Pyra or run in comparison to something more hand wrangled to run well like we're used to, but with a bit of following wind, we could hopefully replace those cores with home made ones.

 

[SNESFAN]

Been doing a bit of thinking on this today. So in terms of accessibility I think the retropie approach is probably the best among the field of options. It strays the least from a straight debian build and will likely play well with a dynamic underlying OS.

The problem with this entire concept however is the whole emulation core argument. The reason why the pandora didn't want to be shipped with emulators was more of a licensing and legal argument than anything else. While emulationstation is a fantastic piece of software, it works best with prebuilt and pre-configured retroarch cores, some cores have a no commercial use licensing model. Also ED has stated he didn't want any emulators shipped on the device so half the fun of emulationstation (plug and play) is pretty much out the window.

So this creates quite the hurdle to overcome to be completely honest. Emulationstation is a great frontend for applicaitons as well, and I think would still work better than minimenu as a .pnd console-like frontend. But I imagine quite a bit of scripting wizardry will be needed to connect filetypes with post purchase download of emulator cores. Not impossible, but definitely troublesome. Going to give this part of it a good think, I also welcome some ideas if you have any. I think the conversation should be had on how to do retropie/debian build on the pyra correctly given all it's goals and reservations.

EDIT:
emulationstation licensing (open/free commercial use allowed)

EmulationStation/LICENSE.md at unstable · Aloshi/EmulationStation

A flexible emulator front-end supporting keyboardless navigation and custom system themes. - Aloshi/EmulationStation

github.com

libretro licensing (some cores non-commercial use)

Licenses - Libretro Docs

This is the official RetroArch documentation for users and developers. Information from sources outside of this website may be dated or incorrect.

docs.libretro.com

My personal tastes are probably going to drive me to batocera anyway, not that I would give up on thinking this is a good idea in general. But batocera is what I personally am going to want, and a buildroot root file system and a straight debian would need to be more parallel and I could realistically see updating debian as breaking a buildroot file system unless care is used in how the kernel is compiled. I have experience in buildroot with the GCW-Zero and other MIPS devices so I think I should be able to whip up a port in time. However, batocera also has a no commercial use license (due to buildroot compiling retroarch cores) so whatever I make will need to be aftermarket anyway, so mine will probably just be a standalone port for others in want/need to use.

 

[levi]

Wouldn't stop anyone building a retro-pi installer and putting it on the repo I assume though.

 

[pmprog]

I did plan on writing a minimenu style launcher, as I'm not too keen on Emulation Station, but I'm not getting much time my way

But whilst we're on this topic, what are the notable differences between all these? Because everything i read just indicate they all use Emulation Station and RetroArch, so i can't imagine them being all that different

 

[SNESFAN]

Emulation station configs and themes mainly, filesystem layout, included and configured emulators, just like some Linux distros, some don't have much other than "this guy rolled his own and named it Bob" all the way to having optimizations and emulators not normally found in retroarch and tight integration with system functions. There is no single way each diverge from another.

 

[pmprog]

There is no single way each diverge from another.

I guess that's why i found it difficult to work out what the difference was. Your analogy to Linux distros was very apt, as i always found it difficult to work out which distro to use too. Though I've settled on Kubuntu at the minute because I'm used to apt and quite a few projects list Ubuntu when they talk about installs, and I've always seemed to click with KDE