Mounting a retro-console on a Raspberry Pi is one of the tasks most often carried out by users with this mini-computer. For this we only need to have the micro-PC board, a memory card, the controls (or keyboard + mouse, whatever we prefer) and, of course, an operating system for this purpose. Although we can install the RetroArch emulator pack on any Linux distro, there are specialized systems and much more cared for that will allow us to carry out this task more easily. And one of the best is Lakka .
Lakka is a Linux distro, based on LibreELEC , specialized in everything related to retro game emulation. This system basically brings the Linux Kernel, some administrative tools and RetroArch, avoiding filling our system with all kinds of junk and unnecessary files and tools that have nothing to do with emulation.
This distro had not received a single update for more than a year. Luckily, the project was not abandoned yet, and today, its developers have just surprised us with a new version of the retro system, a version that arrives full of changes and news that we are going to see below.
Changes and news in Lakka 3.0
Thanks to the nightly versions of this program, the Lakka developers have been able to fully debug the new version of this operating system. All kinds of changes have been included, starting with the version of the base operating system, which has been updated to LibreELEC 9.2. New APIs have also been added that make Vulkan compatible in AMD, Intel and Raspberry Pi 4 computers. And, in addition, support has been added to be able to use the emulators with Joycons.
RetroArch has also been updated. The main emulator kit has been brought to version 1.9.3, including a long list of changes and new features. For example, a new screen saver has been added, new time zones, new menu for pairing devices via Bluetooth, improvements in list searches, easier to enter “concentration mode”, new browser, loading animations , improvements to menus and widgets, improvements to the Wi-Fi menu and significant performance improvements when changing the operating instructions of the CPU.
The kernels , of course, have also been updated to their latest versions. Furthermore, new cores have been added to this retro operating system, such as Genesis Plus-GX Wide, Stella, Supafaust, Swanstation, LowRes NX, Mu and Opera.
Finally, it should be noted that the new Lakka 3.0 is now available for more platforms. For example, it now has a 64-bit image for the Raspberry Pi 4, a new image for Odroid Go Advance, iMX6 and even a native version for use on the Nintendo Switch .
Download or update
Being a big update, Lakka officials recommend doing a clean installation of the system instead of an update. This is due, among other things, to the fact that the main system partition will now occupy 2 GB instead of the current 512 MB , so it is incompatible. We can keep the playlists, games and resources of our current Lakka without problem, but we will have to manually copy them to the computer to avoid losing them.
The developers of this distro seem to have fully returned to the development of this system. Right now they are working to detect and solve the errors that may be in this new version of the distro, and they are preparing a new big update that will be based on LibreELEC 10. This update aims to launch more 64-bit versions (for example, for the Raspberry Pi 3), but it will leave several old devices unsupported due to incompatibilities. At the moment, it is not known what they are.
We can download the new Lakka 3.0 directly from this link. And in it we will also find everything necessary to install it in the micro-SD to start it up as soon as possible.