The last time I tried emulation on a desktop PC, whether it was Windows or Linux, I had to install each emulator separately. It was a bit of a mess.

On my Steam Deck, Emudeck made it stupid easy. Retroarch wasn’t terrible, but was a bit more irritating and buggy for me to get working. Either way, it had a bunch of emulators all in one spot so I didn’t have to go hunting for a ton of them. Are there solutions like this for Linux as well now? What about for Windows or something like a RetroPIE?

      • BlueSquid0741@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        9·
        9 months ago

        It’s not retroarch. If you have been in emulation for a while that’s enough right there. No one is reusing retroarch cores here.

        https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Ares

        If you don’t want to spend 3 hours setting up an emulator, ares is basically just: open software, click to open what you want to play. The interface isn’t trying to reinvent a weird ps3 or Switch hybrid on your pc. It is similar to regular desktop software ui you might have used during your life.

        Ares was developed by Near (rip). If you don’t know who that is, it’s a shame, but I’m not going to go into it here. It’s now maintained by people continuing Near’s work on trying to achieve cycle accurate, preservation quality emulation.

        Some of the emulation cores, SNES, 32x, N64, MegaDrive and Sega CD are the best in class, by a wide margin. Turbografx is comparable if not better than mednafen. SNES especially good since that was Near’s main focus for many years - you might know it as bsnes or higan from before they started pushing the ares emulator more before they died.

        Some systems are definitely best played elsewhere (mgba is better for gba, Stella is better for 2600, Duckstation for ps1, Sameboy for gameboy colour). But that defeats the purpose of your question. For the sake of having all the emulation in one place, ares usually do fine with these.

        It can be taxing. If you are running an older underpowered machine, you might not have a good time.

    • matcha_addict@lemy.lolEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      OP mentioned trying retroarch, and that it was not too bad, but wondering if there are alternatives.

  • Daniel QuinnEnglish
    102·
    9 months ago

    I think Emudeck is available as a Flatpak, so you should be able to install it on your desktop too.

    • baduhai@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      14·
      9 months ago

      It is not, you may be confusing it with retrodeck, which is solely distributed as a flatpak.

      • Daniel QuinnEnglish
        34·
        9 months ago

        Oh really? Boo.

        Retrodeck looks good, but the recommended install instructions were just too nutty for me: curl https://... | bash is not ok.

          • Daniel QuinnEnglish
            1·
            9 months ago

            Well that looks promising. Last time I looked into it, I was put off by a shell script that called sudo, but if it’s bound to a Flatpak, I can work with that.

              • Daniel QuinnEnglish
                2·
                9 months ago

                Ahh, yeah that’s about what I remember. Too messy for me. This sounds like it’d be better as an actual package (apt/pacman) then.

        • amigan@lemmy.dynatron.meEnglish
          33·
          9 months ago

          You…can just download the script and inspect it yourself before running. This cargo cult “security” advice needs to stop.

          • Daniel QuinnEnglish
            31·
            9 months ago

            I did just that. It’s not about security. It’s about messing with my machine’s setup. I don’t want to run a bunch of rando commands that might mess with how my actual package manager manages my system.

            • amigan@lemmy.dynatron.meEnglish
              31·
              9 months ago

              This is quite fair, and I agree. I just hear far too often people rejecting running scripts out of hand because sOmEoNe sAiD pIpE iT tO tHe sHeLL. Usually such scripts are just using the package manager anyway.

  • XTL@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    7·
    9 months ago

    If you can use a spare box or at least a boot device, there are systems like https://batocera.org/ that will box a lot of stuff together. Obviously independent emulators are all distributed independently though many of them do multiple systems.

  • phxEnglish
    6·
    9 months ago

    Just do a “RetroPie” install on Linux. It was originally built for Pi’s but works fine on 64-bit Debian/Ubuntu etc

  • just_another_person@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    9 months ago

    Emudeck is just an installer for RetroArch with Emulationstation as the frontend, so just install those, and you’ll have the same experience.

  • Bobby Turkalino@lemmy.yachtsEnglish
    4·
    9 months ago

    Retroarch is solid after you take some time to configure it to work exactly how you want it to cuz some of the defaults are a bit weird