Installation and platform support
The supported platforms and devices, and the ease of installation.
We’re looking for a good installation experience when installing on a standard PC, but we’re also interested in support for other platforms such as the Raspberry Pi. RetroPie is a complete distro for the Raspberry Pi and a few other single-board computers (SBCs). To install it, you write the IMG file to an SD card. On first run, RetroPie expands the partition to fill the SD card, requiring a reboot before use. It can be installed on a PC, but installation is rather convoluted as it involves installing RetroPie on an existing Ubuntu/Debian Linux installation. It would be up to you to set RetroPie to launch on boot for full-screen use without a keyboard or mouse.
Much the same can be said for RetroArch on a PC, as it is a piece of software rather than a distro. However, if you can get a Linux installation with full driver support up and running on a platform, you should be able to get RetroArch running on top. We installed it via Flatpak, but other packages, such as Snap, are available. The basic configuration is minimalistic. For example, it has no actual emulator cores installed by default. However, it’s easy to add these cores, as needed, from within the interface.
The Batocera website contains images for a large variety of Linux-compatible handhelds in addition to the more common platforms such as a Raspberry Pi or a desktop PC. It even has its own installer, built into the interface, that can fetch the required image for the target platform and write it to the boot media.
Recalbox is installed by writing an image file to a bootable medium such as an SD card or a USB flash drive. The supported platforms are extensive, including desktop PCs, a variety of SBCs, such as the Raspberry Pi, and a few handhelds.
Lakka works in much the same way as the other distros. The download section has a good variety of images supporting a range of handhelds, SBCs and a generic PC.