How to install Retroarch on *plain* Raspbian, and performance

RetroArch Linux devices
#1

Hi,

I’d like to install Retroarch on a plain Raspbian installation for my Raspberry Pi 4. I don’t want to use NOOBS and Lakka for this one.

Googling showed me I can use Flatpak for that. I also read about PPA for Ubuntu. I’d like to ask this please:

  • Will this get super complex?
  • Will a Flatpak installation of Retroarch perform worse than Lakka?
  • Which one would you advise, Flatpak or PPA?

Thanks a lot

#2

Lakka has performed slightly better in the past due to the fact that it just doesn’t have a bunch of stuff, like an X server, bogging it down. I’m not sure if that’s still the case, or if the RPi4 can better handle that sort of thing.

I would say it’s worth trying the Flatpak/Snap packages and/or the PPA to see if any of them treat you well.

#3

I run Retroarch on a Pi 3B, on Raspbian Lite (Buster). Just like Lakka, I do not use X but instead KMS. In my case I do not notice any drop in performance (in fact it is a bit faster because I use the Mesa driver).

@AnAt-man do you have any experience compiling? I think building from source would be the best option (for optimization, enabling GLES3 etc.).

#4

Thank you - i may give it a try. Would be on Raspbian without the desktop, just the plain text interface.

#5

I don’t have any experience with compiling other than following step-by-step procedures (for example: i succeeded in installing Minecraft on Gentoo 64bit on the Pi4, on another SD card).

If you could please point me to a good guide, i would try to follow it.

#6

I followed this guide: Setting up RetroArch on a Raspberry Pi

However, the Pi 4 has some differences which are discussed in the comments regarding CFLAGS and build settings. For the correct build settings I would use as is used in Lakka: retroarch/package.mk

I believe these options should work, at least to start:

--enable-neon --disable-videocore --disable-opengl1 --enable-kms --disable-x11 --enable-opengles --enable-opengles3 --enable-opengl_core
1 Like
#7

That’s very helpful, thank you. Will try it tomorrow and report back.

#8

I ended up quitting. Far too complicated for me… just setting up Raspbian Lite from an image was tough enough, i could get past getting a config.txt that would work as well as the one i edited in Lakka.

Thanks for all that help, i’ll get reading and maybe try again in the future.