When comparing Batocera vs Pop!_OS, the Slant community recommends Pop!_OS for most people. In the question“What is the best OS for gaming?” Pop!_OS is ranked 3rd while Batocera is ranked 15th. The most important reason people chose Pop!_OS is:
If you're a fan of flat desktop interfaces reminiscent of Material design on Android, you'll like the theme that comes as a default in Pop! OS. The desktop and title bars all use a bright turquoise theme that makes the interface feel happy and borderline retro-chic. I found it to be like something you'd find printed on a ringer t-shirt.
Specs
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Pros
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.
Pro FREE and plug and play
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.
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.
Pro Easy to use
Batocera is much easier to use and configure than Lakka, especially for MAME and data transferring.
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.
Pro Wide array of features
Batocera supports more features (like nVidia streaming) that competitors do not.
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.
Pro Pop! makes GNOME look really good
If you're a fan of flat desktop interfaces reminiscent of Material design on Android, you'll like the theme that comes as a default in Pop! OS. The desktop and title bars all use a bright turquoise theme that makes the interface feel happy and borderline retro-chic. I found it to be like something you'd find printed on a ringer t-shirt.
Pro User-friendly installer
The visually appealing and easy to use installer makes dual booting as easy as it can be.
Pro Nice gnome theme dy default
Has nice gnome theme looks really good.
Pro Ready to play games, out of the box
If you still miss how easy it was to just click-install and play games in Windows, Pop! will give you that similar expectation.
Pro A separate NVIDIA version
Most linux distros seem to hate Nvidia's graphics cards e.g. Fedora and OpenSUSE. System76 have decided to be kind. They have decided to form a good relationship with Nvidia fans and Nvidia itself. By creating a separate installation media that is dedicated for providing support to Nvidia's graphics cards. Even going as far as putting Nvidia's driver updates on Pop!_Shop for users to easily access and install.
Pro Optimized for modern hardware
Whereas normally, to use a brand new computer with a Linux OS, you would typically try to use unstable and sometimes buggy drivers - or struggle without hardware support until a stable release comes along.
Pro Made by a hardware seller
System76 is a hardware company. It configures machines to ship with Linux pre-installed. This means its entire business model centers around delivering a quality desktop Linux experience.
As a result, the company pours more attention onto the desktop. It can fix visual issues and may be able to provide a smoother overall experience than you would have installing a different version of Linux on your machine yourself. Providing Pop!_OS also empowers System76 to make certain fixes for users directly rather than having to coordinate with Canonical or the broader Ubuntu community.
Cons
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.
Con Buggy
There are still many bugs.
Con Fomrat a disk doesn't always work
Can be buggy, sometimes you are unable to format your disk at any format under Batocera.
Con Hostile fork
It is an hostile Recalbox fork.
Con Needs the whole disk
There is no option to install the system in dual-boot with another OS on one hard disk drive.
Con 64-bit only
Some older PCs still have 32 Bit processors. This limitation will be a major con for those who use an older PC since they will not be able to install, run it in a VM or live media