The release of the Lakka 3.7 distribution kit has been published, which allows you to turn computers, set-top boxes or single-board computers into a full-fledged game console for running retro games. The project is a modification of the LibreELEC distribution, originally designed for creating home theaters. Lakka builds are generated for platforms i386, x86_64 (Intel, NVIDIA or AMD GPU), Raspberry Pi 1-4, Orange Pi, Cubieboard, Cubieboard2, Cubietruck, Banana Pi, Hummingboard, Cubox-i, Odroid C1/C1+/XU3/XU4 and etc. To install, just write the distribution onto an SD card or USB drive, connect the gamepad and boot the system.
Lakka is based on the RetroArch game console emulator, which emulates a wide range of devices and supports advanced features such as multiplayer games, state saving, image quality enhancement of old games using shaders, game rewind, hot plugging of gamepads and video streaming. Emulated consoles include: Atari 2600/7800/Jaguar/Lynx, Game Boy, Mega Drive, NES, Nintendo 64/DS, PCEngine, PSP, Sega 32X/CD, SuperNES, etc. Gamepads from existing game consoles are supported, including Playstation 3, Dualshock 3, 8bitdo, Nintendo Switch, XBox 1 and XBox360.
In the new release:
- RetroArch has been updated to version 1.10, which includes improved Wayland support, HDR support, improved online play, modernized menus, improved UWP/Xbox support, and an expanded Nintendo 3DS emulator.
- Updated versions of emulators and game engines. The composition includes new engines wasm4, jumpnbump, blastem, freechaf, potator, quasi88, retro8, xmil and fmsx.
- Mesa package has been updated to version 21.3.6. The Linux kernel has been updated to version 5.10.101. The set of firmware for Raspberry Pi boards has been updated to version 1.20210831 (problems with initializing 4K screens have been resolved).
- To improve the stability of the wireless connection, the wifi power saving mode is disabled by default for Raspberry Pi boards.
- Added support for Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W boards.
- A utility has been added to disable Xbox360 gamepads.
Additionally, you can note the publication by Collabora of a note about the architecture of the SteamOS 3 operating system, which comes in the Steam Deck portable gaming computer and is radically different from SteamOS 2. Some features of SteamOS 3:
- Transition from Debian package base to Arch Linux.
- By default, the root FS is read-only.
- A developer mode is provided, in which the root partition is put into write mode and provides the ability to modify the system and install additional packages using the pacman package manager for Arch Linux.
- Atomic update installation mechanism - there are two disk partitions, one is active and the other is not, the new version of the system in the form of a ready-made image is fully loaded into the inactive partition, and it is marked active. In case of failure, you can roll back to the old version.
- Support for Flatpak packages.
- The PipeWire media server is enabled.
- The graphics stack is based on the latest version of Mesa.
- To ensure the launch of a Windows game, Proton is used, which is based on the code base of the Wine and DXVK project.
- To speed up the launch of games, the Gamescope composite server (formerly known as steamcompmgr) is used, which uses the Wayland protocol, which provides a virtual screen and can work on top of other desktop environments.
- In addition to the specialized Steam interface, the main composition includes the KDE Plasma desktop for performing tasks not related to games (you can connect a keyboard and mouse to the Steam Deck via USB-C and turn it into a workstation).
Source: opennet.ru