Possibility of RetroArch build on Steam Link?

RetroArch Linux devices
#1

The Steam Link is a $50 in-home streaming device made by Valve. I got one today and have been playing around with it. It surprisingly runs a fairly full feature Linux kernel/rootfs.

Some details and examples https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steamlink-sdk

Extra details from my digging https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxmasterrace/comments/526n88/_/

The Kodi example can actually be compiled and runs https://github.com/painejake/steamlink-bin

Seeing the toolchain and fairly recent libs got me thinking about a RetroArch port. Was wondering if anybody had started looking into this, and if not, I might take a stab at trying a compile from git and getting it to work.

1 Like
#2

You know a Raspberry Pi 2/3 is cheaper and more powerfull ?

Technical specs of the Steam link are very low (1 ARMv7 core @1Ghz, 256M ram), especially with the undocumented GPU, it would perform worse than a Raspberry Pi 1. Looking into this would be quite a waste.

By the way, you know you can build a “Steam Link” on a Raspberry Pi through moonlight-embedded ?

#3

[QUOTE=BarbuDreadMon;47024]You know a Raspberry Pi 2/3 is cheaper and more powerfull ?

Technical specs of the Steam link are very low (1 ARMv7 core @1Ghz, 256M ram), especially with the undocumented GPU, it would perform worse than a Raspberry Pi 1. Looking into this would be quite a waste.

By the way, you know you can build a “Steam Link” on a Raspberry Pi through moonlight-embedded ?[/QUOTE]

It’s more of because it’s most likely possible, not about that other hardware can do it better. :stuck_out_tongue: I got the Steam Link as something to mess around with and it has already surprised me more than I could have imagined.

I hate that people blanket Moonlight as an end-all be-all solution. Moonlight ONLY works with Nvidia by mimicking a Shield device. So what about AMD/Intel? Steam’s in-home streaming supports hardware decoding on all three GPU brands but yes you do lose the platform compatibility that Moonlight has.

Anyways, still looking into the RA port but it seems like I’m in over my head (Not much experience with cross-compiling)

#4

Actually, since it’s GPL, a moonlight-embedded libretro core would be quite nice !

#5

Having retroarch natively in steam link would be good news. So we could have all the possible cores. There is already a port for steam link, but it is short in cores and options.