Lakka is the official Linux distribution of RetroArch

Abarbarian

Abarbarian

Acruncher
Joined
Sep 30, 2005
Messages
11,023
Reaction score
1,223
http://www.lakka.tv/

Lakka is powerful
Built on top of the famous RetroArch emulator, Lakka is able to emulate a wide variety of systems and has some useful features such as automatic joypad recognition, rewinding, netplay, and shaders.

Supported Systems
Lakka is able to emulate the systems listed below. Of course, some systems have more requirements than others, and will run too slow on weak hardware. Our documentation details what hardware is needed to run each system at a decent speed.

The live USB mode
Another good option to keep the costs low, is to run Lakka in Live USB mode. This mode allows you to play Lakka directly from a USB drive, without installing Lakka on the PC allowing for portability.

The performance will certainly be good, since most modern PCs are extremely powerful. You can store games and ROMS directly on the USB key. All data will be saved on the USB, including screenshots, savestates, and settings. This is know as persistence.

It is also a convenient way to test Lakka on various PCs, or to showcase your current game library and saves to your friends while visiting them.

This link shows you what emulators you can use and on what hardware

http://www.lakka.tv/powerful/

Looks like a great way to play all your old favourites. I recon on a decent pc and using a USB 3 stick you would have pretty much flawless gaming.

:cool:
 
I gave this a try out. Used a old 1 GB usb and tried to play it on me old Dell as that is the only pc I have working at the moment.

Loading the stick was pretty easy as MX-15 comes with UNetbootin so it is just a couple of clicks to load the usb.
Trying it out on the Dell seemed to go ok as after some text scrolling past I made it to a screen asking if I wanted to INSTALL or GO LIVE. Clicked the live option and it complained about not finding some partition or something and refused to go further.
Looks like the Dell will not play for some reason so may have a go with a spare Pi and the tv.

One good thing about this is if I can get a working set up I can use my Steam controller. An I have found over 2500 roms to try out. Finding the roms took around five minutes and there are tons and tons more out there.

:cool:
 
Will this download and run on Linux Mint Cinnamon 18 system Abarbarian ether as a download or from a USB??
 
bootneck02 said:
Will this download and run on Linux Mint Cinnamon 18 system Abarbarian ether as a download or from a USB??
Click to expand...

You should be able to run it from a USB as a LIVE OS.

http://www.lakka.tv/doc/The-Live-USB-Mode/

I tried the 32 Bit version as I have an older Dell and I wanted to try it out on some older pc's

http://www.lakka.tv/get/linux/generic/

It is fairly painless to write an image to a usb via the command line from a terminal. You may find it easier to use a tool with a gui.
I used UNetbootin as it is already installed in MX-15. Not sure if it comes with Mint or if you will have to jump some hoops.
If using Mint with a UEFI mobo this may be of use, see post 10

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/612087/unetbootin/

Here is a general guide to making a bootable usb. Read the advisor about how to format a usb properly. An then section 3.

https://mintguide.org/tools/317-make-a-bootable-flash-drive-from-an-iso-image-on-linux-mint.html

I use GPARTED which comes installed with MX-15 and I find that once I have formated a usb it helps if I unmount the usb and reboot the pc then mount the usb before I try to write a os to it. You may not need to do that.

Call out if you need some pointers. There are tons of guides and walkthroughs on the net though and you may find it helpful to use one written for a Mint user. In the short search I did it seems there are some differences in the way Mint and MX-15 do things.
Naturally I think that MX-15 is the better way. :lol:
 
Oh Thanks Abarbarian my trouble is I have not yet tried the command line as a bit frightened that I will bugger up Mint, but I suppose I should grasp the nettle at sometime:confused:
 
bootneck02 said:
Oh Thanks Abarbarian my trouble is I have not yet tried the command line as a bit frightened that I will bugger up Mint, but I suppose I should grasp the nettle at sometime:confused:
Click to expand...

If you read my post and read the links you will see that you do not need to use the command line.

Mind you if you fancied a go then

Using the Terminal
It is really simple. Go to a Terminal and type:


sudo dd if=~/Desktop/linuxmint.iso of=/dev/sdx bs=4M && sync
Where '~/Desktop/linuxmint.iso' is the name and location of your downloaded image (located at the desktop in this example) and '/dev/sdx' is the target USB drive.

If you don't know about the target USB drive path, run this command and figure out your destination drive.

sudo fdisk -l
Warning: Make sure to set the correct device path, as this process will delete all data that was on the specified device previously!

Remember, don't include an integer for the USB drive, e.g. '/dev/sdx1', as it would refer to the existing partition on that drive and not the drive itself.

When the USB has been properly created by 'dd', there should be an output similar to this:

sudo dd if=~/Desktop/linuxmint.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4M && sync
706+1 records in
706+1 records out
740601856 bytes (741 MB) copied, 91.7024 s, 8.1 MB/s

:cool:
 
I tried to load up a usb with UNetbootin and it did not boot. I had another go and it did not work.

So I tried to load up the usb with the trusty old "dd" comand and I have a bootable Lakka usb.

It seems to work ok but have not managed to run a game yet. Loaded some roms into the correct folders and I think I have added a config file for my Steam controller into the correct folder and that is as far as I have got.

You have to use the arrow keys and " Z, X , S, " keys also, you may be able to use other keys aswell. As I have never played any games on any hardware other than on a pc I am sort of walking in the dark. Someone who has played with all the different gaming setups may find using Lakka a lot easier.

All in all even though I have not managed to play a game yet I would say that this is looking pretty good. The Lakka os takes a while to boot from the usb which is to be expected but is fast and smooth in operation.

:cool:
 
Back
Top