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4.7 star rating
0
Gaming
PC
Single Board Computer
Operating System
IoT
Retrogaming
What is the best OS for retrogaming for IoT devices?
5
Options
Considered
280
User
Recs.
Apr 8, 2023
Last
Updated
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5
Games
Considered
Best OS for retrogaming for IoT devices
Price
Based On
Package Manager
80
RetroPie
0
Debian/Raspian
Debian Package Manager
80
Recalbox
-
NA
Kodi
79
Batocera
FREE
Recalbox
Kodi
59
Lakka
-
LibreELEC
RetroArch
--
Android
-
Android Open Source Project (AOSP)
APK, Various app stores
See Full List
80
RetroPie
My Rec
ommendation
for
RetroPie
My Recommendation for
RetroPie
All
14
Experiences
3
Pros
7
Cons
3
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Support for a lot of emulators
Retropie has a lot of emulators available to download.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Not very user friendly
Most configuration can be done using retropie menu, but if you need more advanced configurations, you'll need some linux knowledge.
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Gregory Carter's Experience
Prone to crash, not very stable, performance on anything outside of a Raspberry Pi is worse than the other options, and even with the Pi, stock configuration is worse than other choices.
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Specs
See All Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Retropie menu
A frontend to install and configure most of capabilities.
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Top
Con
•••
Development has slowed and is behind the pace of others
Still stuck on 32 bit OS, and older version of Linux.
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UnbiasedTsukiyomi's Experience
High compatibility and tons of tweaks you can do on it. BUT, its very hard for people who don't have patience. You need to research a lot and do a lot of BACKUPS so you dont mess up and end up bugging or destroying your build. If you are a beginner, i recommend Batocera. If you are into making your raspberry into your personal machine, i recomend Retropie. You can even change splashscreens for each game, put music, use a SNES classic theme, etc.
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Top
Pro
•••
Built on pure debian
If you have the knowledge, it's possible to add unsupported controllers, unsupported software and more.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Uncommon tweaks might bug the OS
Each time you change your config, its better to backup so you don't mess up your build.
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MotivatedTitias's Experience
I have it on my laptop as a app I would recommend it
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Top
Pro
•••
Customizable
It runs on top of a full Linux distribution so you can tweak, replace, customize anything without much hassle.
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Top
Pro
•••
Dual-boot / Can be installed to a partition
You can use a minimal Debian testing and install Retropie on top of it.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Most emulators apps
Since you have a full distro behind you it is possible to run/integrate any application.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Intuitive
Easy to use.
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0
Recommend
42
8
80
Recalbox
My Rec
ommendation
for
Recalbox
My Recommendation for
Recalbox
All
10
Experiences
2
Pros
5
Cons
2
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Easy user interface
It has a simple and easy to use UI.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Toxic community
If you're not French, they will make zero effort to help you. Switch to Batocera, their community is miles ahead from Recalbox.
See More
Jérémy Del Grosso's Experience
Overall, my experience is quite shared
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Specs
See All Specs
Top
Pro
•••
PLUG & PLAY - if you boot on it, it works
It can be portable and ready to use. You can dual boot (wiki support for dual booting.) Updates and support by the community.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Needs the whole disk
There is no option to install the system in dual-boot with another OS on one hard disk drive.
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WonderfulArshiTengri's Experience
Batocera is actually a superior experience to Recalbox. If you're not French, Recalbox will simply ignore you - this community is toxic.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Easy to configure
Almost all configuration are done via user interface.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Faster
Build on top of buildroot, the system only have the necessary services to run.
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Top
Pro
•••
Custom EmulationStation built for Recalbox
EmulationStation is customized to fit Recalbox features, making the configuration a lot easier.
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See All
Get it
here
Recommend
37
12
79
Batocera
My Rec
ommendation
for
Batocera
My Recommendation for
Batocera
All
23
Experiences
9
Pros
8
Cons
5
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
User-friendly
All options are right there in the EmulationStation menu and ready to be changed at the click of a button. No distorted configuration files all over the place, no permissions to mess with.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Not for customizers
You can mess with the underlying software and code, but it's not so easily accessed. Since it's designed for user friendliness and ease of use, the software is not easy to change based on configuration options.
See More
OpinionatedTuoni's Experience
It does not see bios that are installed.
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Specs
See All Specs
Top
Pro
•••
FREE and plug and play
See More
Top
Con
•••
Buggy
There are still many bugs.
See More
Jérémy Del Grosso's Experience
Batocera is for me the best of these distributions. It brings an ease and a incomparable speed. I use Batocera on my bartop since its launch. There are constantly updates, the team is very attentive and resolves our problems quickly
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Top
Pro
•••
Controller variety and working Bluetooth pairing
Pairing controllers for wireless operation are so much easier with Batocera. Also easily within reach in the ES menu.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Fomrat a disk doesn't always work
Can be buggy, sometimes you are unable to format your disk at any format under Batocera.
See More
PerceptiveArges's Experience
It is thought to be a very good retrogaming system ;)
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Great selection of systems available
Incorporates not only Retroarch-based systems, but other emulator packages as well (AdvMAME, Reicast, PPSSPP, etc.) integrated with the EmulationStation frontend.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Hostile fork
It is an hostile Recalbox fork.
See More
AffableRaweno's Experience
the beast
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Easy to use
Batocera is much easier to use and configure than Lakka, especially for MAME and data transferring.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Needs the whole disk
There is no option to install the system in dual-boot with another OS on one hard disk drive.
See More
ThoroughNibhaz's Experience
I use Batocera stable and beta on rpi3 and X86_64 and the system is just amazing!
See More
Top
Pro
•••
With some effort you can share disc with other system
Good community, github is hot, the OS is permanently developed. You may witness a real spirit of open-source. You can make it coexisting with other system (debian in my case) but to do it you need to know linux and its bootloader.
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EagerAmanikable's Experience
Batocera is the best retrogaming solution for all and for cheap
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Wide array of features
Batocera supports more features (like nVidia streaming) that competitors do not.
See More
ExuberantWuluwaid's Experience
This is the best overall retrogaming distribution. Easy to install, great performance, the best selection of handpicked emulators.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Optimized performance from having a smaller footprint
Like Lakka and Recalbox, the software is the OS, so it takes up much less space and has far less demands on hardware than other emulator-based packages which have an OS attached i.e. Retropie.
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MotivatedTitias's Experience
I switched from Lakka to this and got much better results and everything is already there including kodi vary easy to use
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Claudio Monteiro's Experience
best retrogaming choice
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FREE
Recommend
124
8
59
Lakka
My Rec
ommendation
for
Lakka
My Recommendation for
Lakka
All
17
Experiences
3
Pros
7
Cons
6
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Good support for controllers
Most controllers are configured automatically.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Terrible User-Interface
The interface includes various submenus which makes it very hard to use
See More
Gregory Carter's Experience
I love three things about Lakka: it's universal controller scheme across all games, it's wide compatibility across various hardware (Raspbery Pi, WeTek Play, Odroid, PC (x86 and x64)), and the fact that it's lightweight, which means it has the best, fastest and most accurate emulation across all of the IoT frontends/software packages (and yes, I've tried them all).
See More
Specs
See All Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Built on top of RetroArch
It's based on RetroArch OS
See More
Top
Con
•••
Needs the whole Disk
There is no option to install the system in dual-boot with another OS on one hard disk drive.
See More
EnthusiasticBobbiBobbi's Experience
Very good
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Cores (emulator support) can be downloaded via interface
It's easy to add new emulators, even if you compile them yourself.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Adding new games and scans can be difficult if you don't have some knowledge
You need some knowledge if you want to add a different rom (lakka, like retroarch, supports only no-intro naming, there's no generic scan like emulationstation).
See More
MotivatedTitias's Experience
It needs to make improvements it's buggy need both keyboard and game controller in order to save state and exit game bluetooth in ssh paired my controller sucessfully but couldn't work had to use it wired for the best results I would recommend Retropie or Batocera
See More
Top
Pro
•••
First to get new Retroarch features implemented directly
Because they're part of the RA team, of course. :)
See More
Top
Con
•••
No built-in GUI to manage Bluetooth devices
It needs to be done over the CLI.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Highly configurable
A lot of customizations and advanced options available.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Uses RetroArch
A multi-emulator needs to make compromises.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Supports different frontends
Lakka has different frontends in case your IoT is too slow for the default one.
See More
Top
Con
•••
No persistent BlueTooth pairing
Every time you restart Lakka it will lose all of its BlueTooth devices.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Different interfaces for different scenarios
Some interfaces like rgui makes the OS possible to run fine even in the Raspberry Pi 1st gen.
See More
Hide
See All
Get it
here
Recommend
29
13
--
Android
My Rec
ommendation
for
Android
My Recommendation for
Android
All
8
Experiences
1
Pros
4
Cons
2
Specs
Top
Con
•••
Not made for retro gaming
Android isn't made for retro gaming.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Integration with Google Services
For those that already use Google's services, like Google Maps and GMail, Android offers tighter integration with those services than any of the alternatives, and saves users the need to create extra accounts.
See More
Ajay Kumar Rawani's Experience
Awesome !
See More
Specs
See All Specs
Top
Con
•••
Not all IoT devices fully supported
Some IoT devices have little to poor support for running on android.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Lots of hardware choices
There are about 18000 released devices that run on Android. This means that a user familiar with Android can have a large variety of devices from which they can choose.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Customize what apps perform what actions
Android gives users the ability to define which apps perform which action. For example, if an Android device has several browsers installed, the user can choose a default one which will start every time a link is for example opened from another app.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Open source
The AOSP (Android Open Source Project) is the software stack for the Android OS. It is led by Google. The fact that Android is an open source software has led to many custom Android variants. It also is a big assurance of Android's safety in terms of privacy.
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Get it
here
Recommend
4
3
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