Proton is a compatibility layer for Windows games to run on Linux. Running a Windows games is mostly just hitting the Play button within Steam. It’s that good that many games now run faster on Linux than on native Windows. That’s what makes the Steam Deck the best gaming handheld of the moment.

But a compatibility layer is still a layer, so you may encounter … incompatibilities. Ember Knights is a lovely game with fun co-op multiplayer support. It runs perfectly on the (Linux-based) Steam Deck, but on my Ubuntu laptop I encountered long loading times (startup was 5 minutes and loading between worlds was slow). But once the game was loaded it ran fine.

Debugging the game reveled that there were lost of EAGAIN errors while the game was trying to access the system clock. Changing the numer of allowed open files fixed the problem for me.

Add this to end end of the following files:

• in /etc/security/limits.conf:

* hard nofile 1048576

• in /etc/systemd/system.conf and /etc/systemd/user.conf:

DefaultLimitNOFILE=1048576 

Reboot.

“The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt” is considered to be one of the greatest video games of all time. I certainly agree with that sentiment.

At its core, The Witcher 3 is a action-role playing game with a third-person perspective in a huge open world. You develop your character while the story advances. At the same time you can freely roam and explore as much as you like. The main story is captivating and the world is filled with with side quests and lots of interesting people. Fun for at least 200 hours, if you’re the exploring kind. If you’re not, the base game (without DLCs) will still take you 50 hours to finish.

While similar to other great games like Nintendo’s Zelda Breath of the Wild and Sony’s Horizon Zero Dawn, the strength of the game is a deep lore originating from the Witcher series novels written by the “Polish Tolkien” Andrzej Sapkowski. It’s not a game, but a universe (nowadays it even includes a Netflix tv-series).

A must play.

Played on the Steam Deck without any issues (“Steam Deck Verified”)

Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga is a surprisingly fun game. At its core it’s a role-playing game. But you wouldn’t tell because of the amount of platforming, the quantity and quality of small puzzles and -most of all- the funny self-deprecating dialogue.

As the player you control Mario and Luigi simultaneously and that takes some time to master. As you learn techniques along the way, each character get special abilities allowing you to solve new puzzles and advance on your journey. It’s not a shot game for a handheld, taking around 20-30 hours to finish at the minimum.

The 3DS 2017 remake of 2017 (Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser’s Minions) did keep most of the game as it is, just updating the graphics and music for the more powerful handheld. That’s says a lot about the original whose 2D SNES/GBA graphics don’t feel outdated today, but hip and cute pixel-art.

Have a look at “How to play retrogames?” if you don’t know how to play retrogames.

The good news is that Citra being open source, is still available as archive builds and new forks. EmuDeck on the Steam Deck adapted to this new reality and adopted a bring-your-own Yuzu and Citra model. The changes to this emulators came at the same time of a big EmuDeck release, complication things a little. Without the changes below, you won’t have access to your previous saves, hotbuttons won’t work and you will no longer start games directly (but start the Citra application itself).

Here are my notes for completing the 3DS emulation setup on the Steam Deck:

1. Go to Desktop mode.
2. Get the latest citra-linux-appimage-*.tar.gz from https://github.com/PabloMK7/citra/releases.
3. Unpack it and put cita-qt.Appimage in $HOME/Applications.
4. Open EmuDeck and reset the settings for the Citra emulator. Rescan the games with the ROM Manager.
5. In case you already had Citra installed:
   • Copy your savefiles from /home/deck/.var/app/org.citra_emu.citra/data/citra-emu/sdmc/Nintendo 3DS/ to /home/deck/.local/share/citra-emu/sdmc/Nintendo 3DS/.
   • Uninstall Citra from Discovery. DON´T remove the settings. (Better: backup /home/deck/.var/app/org.citra_emu.citra).
6. Open Citra from the KDE menu:
   • You can bump the resolution to 3x (720p).
   • You can use Vulkan instead of OpenGL.
   • Set your prefer windowing mode (1 use 1 big screen and flip when needed)
7. Go to Game mode.
8. Pick a 3DS game and go to the controller icon. Pick “EmuDeck - Controller Hotkeys”. The backbuttons will allow to switch screen and viewing modes.
9. Go to the menu and set the game to Full Screen. When you start the game again it will start in Full Screen mode.

That’s it. Have fun.

Like many games of that time, Snow Bros. is a simple game that can be mastered with practice (or rather, coins). It’s fun all the way, specially when playing with 2 players (in co-op). The gameplay is somewhat reminiscent of Bubble Bobble, but instead of bubbles you shoot snow to bury enemies in snowballs. Push the snowball to get rid of all the enemies on its path!

The arcade game was ported to a lot of game consoles and gaming computers. It and was even ported to the Nintendo Switch. Something to play with friends or your children.

Have a look at “How to play retrogames?” if you don’t know how to play retrogames.

Time can be cruel for games. Some games don’t age well. The advance in computational and graphical power is painfully clear. But time can also be a filter to separate great from mediocre games. If a game survives for decades, there is a big chance it’s a great game.

Games are released to run on very specific hardware and operating systems. Older games do often not run out of the box on modern computers. However, this does not mean that running them is impossible, or even challenging. There are several options to play these games, depending on what you find important or achievable.

List of Contents:

• Original hardware
• “Rerealesed” mini consoles
• Specialised handhelds
  • The Steam Deck
  • Emulation handhelds
• Dedicated hardware
• Daily laptop, PC or phone

Original hardware

If you want to experience games how they were meant to be played, this is the way to go. Full stop. Maybe you kept your old devices, or found something in an attic or in a garage sale. Also, start looking for CRT TVs (tubes) and a soldering iron for when stuff breaks.

There have been many generations of gaming consoles, and each generation had many competing ones. Some brands still exist today, while many others disappeared with the years. For arcade machines is the situation even more complicated because most of them had dedicated hardware… per game. Many arcades, consoles and games will be hard to find and be prohibitively costly. This is a collector’s meta-game and not practical for most people.

“Rereleased” mini consoles

This is also part of the collector’s meta-game: got to catch them all!

In the last few years, there has been a boom of “mini consoles”. Many of the older game companies -or rather whoever ended with the name and the IP- jumped into the nostalgia powered “mini console” market. A cute mini device that looks like a mini version of the original console is bundled with controllers and a tiny selection of games for the platform (some collections are great, most are disappointing). Most, if not all, of these devices run a software emulator. From the top of my head I can think of mini Nintendo NES, Nintendo SNES, Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, Sega Game Gear, Atari 2600, Commodore 64, Amiga 500, Neo Geo, TurboGrafix-16 and Playstation 1. Retrododo ranks them.

Sadly, by the time you read this, most of these systems will themselves be out of production and, if you find them, they will be overpriced.

Specialised handhelds

This is probably the easiest and most user-friendly way to get into retrogaming. No technical knowledge needed. These little machines are emulation devices: the hardware is simulated on software. While 100% accuracy is not guaranteed, most games will get very close and play perfectly. The older the target platform, the easier it will be emulated on current hardware, often orders of magnitude more powerful. More recent platforms are harder to emulate, but with good enough hardware even the Nintendo Switch can be emulated. Furthermore, you can experience games with better graphics than the originals, thanks to the power of modern hardware that can upscale the native resolutions.

The Steam Deck

The best emulation machine today is a regular gaming handheld, conceived to play modern Windows and Linux games: The Steam Deck. EmuDeck is a 1-click software addon that adds a user-friendly emulation solution for the Steam Deck. It bundles and configures all the emulators you’ll ever need, with support for the built-in controller (or external bluetooth controllers). At the time of writing, EmuDeck includes the following emulators:

• Cemu (Wii U)
• Citra (3DS)
• Dolphin (Gamecube and Wii)
• DuckStation (Playstation 1)
• MAME (Arcade games and more)
• melonDS (Nintendo DS) (Standalone)
• mGBA (Gameboy, Gameboy Color, and Gameboy Advance) (Standalone)
• PCSX2 (Playstation 2)
• PPSSP (Playstation Portable)
• PrimeHack (Metroid Prime Trilogy)
• RetroArch (Retro Systems incl. Atari, NES, SEGA, SNES)
• Rosalie’s Mupen GUI (Nintendo 64)
• RPCS3 (Playstation 3)
• Ryujinx (Nintendo Switch)
• ScummVM (Point and Click Adventures)
• Vita3K (Playstation Vita)
• Yuzu (Nintendo Switch)
• Xemu (OG Xbox)
• Xenia (Xbox 360)

Modern and retro-games in one device is the best of both worlds. Furthermore, the Steam Deck can be connected to a USB-C dock and use a TV or monitor through HDMI. This makes it a very versatile device.

RetroGameCorps has a useful guide for retrogaming on the Steam Deck.

Emulation handhelds

Nowadays, there is a big emulation ecosystem of companies creating cheaper and smaller devices, running on Android or Linux. Most of them will emulate everything from Atari to Sony PSP without any problem. The most powerful ones will also emulate Nintendo Game Cube/Wii and Sony PS2. The best well-known manufacturers are Retroid (I have the rp3+), Ambernic and Ayn Odin. Typically, Linux devices are pre-configured. Android ones need a one-time setup.

Evercade is a special case that may be interesting for people that don’t want to deal with emulation directly. They provide a console-like experience with cartridges that contain a selection of games. There will be huge gaps in the library —e.g. no Mario games—, but they have enough variety in the cartridges to keep you busy for a long time.

Dedicated hardware

If you’re more of a tinkerer, you can easily build your own emulation machine with off the shelf hardware. The more powerful the hardware, the more systems you’ll be able to emulate. But even the slowest hardware available today will easily emulate the classics like NES, SNES, SEGA Genesis, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, Playstation 1 and PSP. The raspberry pi 5 single board computer is a popular computer for this kind of projects. You can also opt for a small mini-pc (NUC) that brings a lot of power in a small package. Even an old laptop will do the job. They all provide an HDMI output to connect to a TV or monitor, and USB ports/Bluetooth for controllers.

There are several software solutions to turn your hardware into an emulation machine, with the most popular being Batocera and RetroPie. They both use the Emulation Station frontend, so they are very similar in usage. Batocera, which I use myself and recommend, makes it easier to setup things like Bluetooth controllers and Wi-Fi.

Daily laptop, PC or phone

If you just want to casually play retro games, you can use your daily laptop/desktop/phone. You’ll need to install the emulators for each system your self, but this is not difficult. You can do it when you need a specific system instead of all at once. There are many frontends to choose from if you want to centralise all your games in one place. (For phones, have a look at my rp3+ guide).

Firewatch is a single person adventure that I enjoyed from the beginning to (almost the) end. Certainly recommended. My only point of criticism is the rather abrupt ending. The game is short (around 5 hours), but the story is by no means rushed.

Your life, as the protagonist, is in shambles. What better way to get your thoughts straight than wandering all day in nature while spotting wildfires? As a firewatcher in a very remote area, your only lifeline to the outside world is a warm and friendly voice through the walkie-talkie. You really look forward to those conversations. But when you’re alone with your thoughts, the majesty of the landscape shows there is a difference between solitude and loneliness.

The game is “Steam Deck Verified”.

A Short Hike is a small indie game. And by small, well, I mean small: you’ll finish the story in around 1 hour and half. You can spend a few additional hours to 100% the game, but there isn’t much incentive to do so once you finish it.

That said, the game is a great example of a cozy game. The artwork is beautiful, the mechanics are good and the quests are easy. There are no wrong choices: you can’t die. A Short Hike wonderfully keeps the sense of discovery alive, resulting in a Zelda-like game with no stress whatsoever.

The game is fun and is certainly worth a play if you find it at a good price.

The game is “Steam Deck Verified”.

Is a game released on 2017 still retrogaming? It is if you played on a Wii-U, the abandoned last-generation console of Nintendo. Yes, it was also released on a Nintendo Switch, as exactly the same game with a very small bump in resolution (from 720p to 900p). Originally it was planned as a Wii-U exclusive, but it took Nintendo a few extra years to get it right. And they did.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild took everything we loved about 2D-Zeldas (top down) without the graphical awkwardness of the early 3D Zelda days (hello, Nintendo64!). It’s one of the best games ever made, where you can spend easily 100+ hours to finish it (and 200-300 to complete it) and feel sad when you do. You’ll never get back that feeling of fragility and discovery you felt as when you started the game. This new world is your oyster as you systematically discover how to survive and thrive. And yes, fulfil the quests and master the shrines (dungeon-like temple where you need to solve a puzzle). Some of them are trivial, some of them complex or far-fetched, most of them fun.

The 2 DLCs, The Master Trials and The Champions’ Ballad don’t add much to the story, but they bring quality of life improvements and also gameplay modes, items, and extra trials and shrines. If you play the game today, it’s worth it to get these expansions as well.

Have a look at “How to play retrogames?” if you don’t know how to play retrogames.

Misfortune Ramirez Hernandez, a cute 8-year-old girl, loves to tell the world she is “a little Miss”. Little Misfortune is more than a wordplay on the story of the child. It’s a lovely, funny and sad little adventure game. All at the same time. It’s about a child’s sense of wonder and about the loss of innocence.

Although short (I finished it around 3 hours), it’s rewarding. No need to make it longer just for the sake of it. The Artwork is beautiful and strengthens the story. While the price is steep for an indie game, it’s certainly worth it (or just wish-list it and wait for the cyclical Steam sales).

While the game is not marked as “Steam Deck Verified” (just “Playable”), I played the game without any issues on the device.

A fun, kind of realistic tennis game. Best for playing in Quick Tournament mode (the history mode is silly). Not easy, but certainly worth it. Handhelds like the rp3+ can upscale it to about 3x the original resolution. My old 2016-Celeron NUC with Batocera can upscale it to 1080p without any issues.

Have a look at “How to play retrogames?” if you don’t know how to play retrogames.

This is a beautiful game with interesting puzzles and… a story. Another perfect example of SNES-level graphics on a small handheld. The game takes a little investment in the beginning because it starts slowly, certainly if you’re not familiar with the action-adventure genre The quests will become clearer and the speed will pick up. You will be stuck more than once (actually, lots of time). You’ll want to finish it in one go, but this open world game will keep you occupied for way, way, longer than you expected. It’s the perfect introduction to rich library of 2D Zelda games.

Have a look at “How to play retrogames?” if you don’t know how to play retrogames.

This game is probably my favorite in the Metroid Series. It’s a perfect example of SNES-level graphics on a small handheld. This is the most story-driven installment of all Metroid 2D games. Be ready to be lost for hours and experience a huge adrenaline boost once you finally figure out what you need to do or when you finish that impossible boss. Oh, and in this Metroid there are situations where there is no way you can win, and you have to run. Very hard.

Have a look at “How to play retrogames?” if you don’t know how to play retrogames.

The 2D Metroid Series offer a perfect mix of platformer action, adventure and intelligent puzzles. While preceded by Metroid (1986) on the NES and Metroid II: Return of Samus (1991) on the GameBoy, this is the game that gave the series its distinct look and identity.

While Metrovania is a thing and inspired many great games for decades to come, it is Metroid and not Castlevania the game that immerses the played in an eerie, dreadful, inmense and most of all lonely universe. It’s close to the atmoshere created on Ridley Scotts’s Alien, a clear inspiration for the developers.

Have a look at “How to play retrogames?” if you don’t know how to play retrogames.

This game returns to the top-down perspective of the first Zelda while making the game graphically stunning (the NES graphics ages less well compared to the SNES/GBA sequels). Even today, more than 30 years later, it’s pretty much the pattern to follow for pixel-art games. This game is long and hard, but at the same time extremely rewarding. It’s a must-play classic.

Have a look at “How to play retrogames?” if you don’t know how to play retrogames.

Dr. Mario is often bundled with its more famous predecessor Tetris. The puzzle game is certainly a worthy successor. While there are versions of this game on more recent consoles, the straightforwardness of the Game Boy is something the more recent ports lack. The game is fast, the music fantastic. Simple and a lot of addictive fun.

Have a look at “How to play retrogames?” if you don’t know how to play retrogames.

Tetris was bundled with the European and North-American release of the new Game Boy handheld. It’s until today in the top 10 of most sold Nintendo games of all time. There are many older versions of Tetris, including the original release on the Sovjet Electronika 60 and later versions on Western and Eastern arcade machines around the world (most of the time, arcade releases were far superior to home console ports).

While it had been ported to all the newer systems (and reimagined), the Game Boy one is the definitive edition for me. The old handheld version has a simplicity that matches the requirements of the game. It’s completely distraction-free and even in colour if you run it in a Game Boy Color handheld (or emulator)! Later releases killed the magic completely. The native Game Boy Color version was nearly identical except disturbing animated backgrounds (!). The worst offender was the Nintendo DS version that uses a second full screen (!!) to shows an animated but mocked Super Mario Bros. game. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Have a look at “How to play retrogames?” if you don’t know how to play retrogames.

This game is the first Nintendo game for a handheld console. No pressure. It’s probably the most quirky Mario game, but in a good way. Mostly line art and 2 Gradius-like flying levels. It’s a short game and rather difficult at the end, but a lot of fun. A worthy adaptation of the Super Mario Bros. formula for the weaker handheld.

Have a look at “How to play retrogames?” if you don’t know how to play retrogames.

This is the game that started the almost 40-years franchise that expanded to animated TV-series and movies. It’s fun, it’s challenging and the soundtrack is recognizable everywhere. The original version is still the best version. Later versions on other consoles often crop the image in order to adapt it to different screen geometries, e.g. the NES Classics release on the Game Boy Advanced. Still the king!

Have a look at “How to play retrogames?” if you don’t know how to play retrogames.

The hardware is nice: the device feels sturdy and premium, the screen is bright and the controls work as expected. Great work, Retroid!

Compared to a single system device, software configuration is certainly more complicated in emulation-land. Although Retroid provides more than the basics, if you are into game emulation, you know your setup will need some tweaking to get the best out of the hardware. In fact, emulation on Android is pretty similar to emulation on non-handheld devices with projects like Batocera or RetroPie on Linux… but not quite. There is a considerable amount of setup-work on Android.

List of Contents:

• General setup: resources
• General setup: nitpicks and additions
  • Play store and sideloading apps
  • Launchers: RetroidLauncher and Daijishō
  • SD directories
  • BIOS
  • Retroarch64
    • Hardcode RetroArch64 to Vulkan
    • Map controls instead of autoconfiguration
    • Create hotkeys
    • Integer scaling and bilinear filtering
• Platform specific notes
  • Arcade MAME
  • Arcade Neo Geo
  • Atari 2600
  • Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)
  • Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES)
  • Nintendo Game Boy (GB)
  • Nintendo Game Boy Color (GBC)
  • Nintendo Game Boy Advanced (GBA)
  • Nintendo 64 (N64)
  • Nintendo Gamecube (GC)
  • Nintendo DS
  • Nintendo 3DS
  • Nintendo Wii
  • Sega Mega Drive/Genesis
  • Sega Saturn
  • Sega Dreamcast
  • Sony PlayStation 1 (PS1/PCX)
  • Sony PlayStation 2 (PS2)
  • Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP)
  • Game Streaming
  • Android Gaming

General setup: resources

Retroid does a good job of setting up the basics. For an overview and more advanced stuff, Mjolnir Stone did a great series with settings for the rp3+. Watch them, and you’ll be set for the most part (by release date):

• Complete Setup Guide
• Nintendo Wii Settings Guide & Gameplay
• PlayStation 2 Settings Guide & Gameplay
• GameCube Settings Guide & Gameplay
• PlayStation Portable Settings Guide
• Dreamcast Settings Guide & Gameplay
• N64 Settings Guide & Gameplay
• PlayStation Settings & Gameplay
• Sega Saturn Settings & Showcase

The Complete Setup mentions the retroarch cores and stand-alone emulators to select. The other videos show the setups to get most games to play flawlessly on the more demanding console generations. I have a few remarks and addition. See below.

General setup: additions and nitpicks

Play store and sideloading apps

Some emulators will be outdated with newer releases fixing bugs or, more commonly, enhancing performance. Some emulators can be updated from the Play Store. However, this will not happen automatically because they weren’t installed from the store originally. You need to manually search for them and update them. Other emulators need to be sideloaded. Be sure to get the apk from their official Github repo and not from a random site.

Launchers: RetroidLauncher and Daijishō

The built-in RetroidLauncher is more than fine. It’s simple, clean and it works. Nicely done, Retroid!

Daijishō (get it from the Play Store) is the better option when you add many roms (you can scroll through all your ROMs in a platform instead of only by the beginning letter in RetroidLauncher) and when you need to configure a different emulator for games within the same platform.

Personally, I keep both launchers on my system.

SD directories

Although the rp3+ has 128GB storage, a SD card is the way to go. Even if you use Daijishō, it’s handy to create the needed SD directories with the RetroidLauncher. Click on “Setup” on the lower left side of the emulation page. From the popped-up menu. create all the directories (including ROMs and BIOS) and basic configurations.

If you used RetroidLauncher later, when selecting ROMs dirs for each platform, you’ll have a handy “Default SD Card Directory” short-cut that will save you many taps. Alternative launchers can use the directories and configurations that the RetroidLauncher created.

BIOS

Some platforms require BIOS files to function or work better with them. Search and download “Retroarch BIOS Pack archive.org” and unzip it in the RetroidPocketGames/BIOS directory of your SD card.

RetroArch64

RetroArch64 is used by most platforms and seerequires quite a lot of customisation. Be sure to save your changes each time:

• Main Menu
• Configuration File
• Save Current Configuration.

Hardcode RetroArch64 to Vulkan

Thanks to the Mali GPU, Vulkan speeds things up considerably. Set it as the default and, optionally, don’t allow cores to fall-back to OpenGL:

• Main Menu
• Settings
• Video
• Output
• Video: pick “vulkan”

Don’t allow cores to override the settings (beware: some core’s won’t work, so you’ll need to pick an alternative):

• Main Menu
• Settings
• Core
• Allow Cores to Switch the Video Driver: OFF

Map controls instead of autoconfiguration

Despite Retroid providing a sane RetroArch64 configuration (games work), you’ll need to remap the controls of port 1 in the RetroArch64 app. Otherwise, buttons will be present but weirdly mapped or even missing (coin and start on MAME). Set up the controller configuration like this:

• Main Menu
• Settings
• Input
• Port 1 Controls
• Device type: RetroPad with Analog
• Analog to Digital Type: Left Analog (Forced) [otherwise the analog sticks will be disabled in MAME and with built-in retroarch cores]
• Map all the controls one by one.
• Save Controller Profile

You’ll need to map the controls for standalone emulators as well.

Create hotkeys

Hotkeys let you save and load within a game, pause, quit it and so on. RetroGameCorps does suggest a useful layout, but it may not work well if you use the analog sticks for playing. Configuration:

• Main Menu
• Settings
• Input
• Hotkeys

My personal setup is a follows (it has changed over time):

• Hot key enabler: right stick button.
• Pop up retroarch menu: left + right stick buttons at the same time.
• Quick safe: right stick button + left trigger.
• Quick load: right stick button + right trigger.
• Quit: left stick button + right shoulder.

Integer scaling and bilinear filtering

These options are pretty much in the eye of the beholder, so try them out if they suit you. Many cores allow you to change them in their settings instead of globally (Shortcut Pop up menu, Options).

Bump up the resolution of games in RetroArch64. Beware that this will add black borders, so more often than not you can leave it disabled. Steps:

• Main Menu
• Settings
• Video
• Scaling
• Set “Integer Scale” to ON
• Main Menu
• Configuration File
• Save Current Configuration.

While at it, you can check if Bilinear Filtering helps with the image quality:

• Main Menu
• Settings
• Video
• Set “Bilinear Filtering” to ON
• Main Menu
• Configuration File
• Save Current Configuration.

Platform specific notes

Arcade MAME

Emulator: retroarch64 core MAME 2003 (0.78)
Status: 🌞

In the Emulation/Mame page, click on “Edit” and on top select the applicable core depending on your ROMs. In my case it’s “RetroArch (MAME 2003 (0.78))”.

Arcade Neo Geo

Emulator: retroarch64 core FB Alpha 2012 Neo Geo
Status: 🌞

Neo Geo needs the neogeo.zip (containing the BIOS) in the ROMs directory (RetroidPocketGames/ROMs/NeoGeo).

Atari 2600

Emulator: retroarch64 core Stella
Status: 🌞

Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)

Emulator: retroarch64 core nestopia
Status: 🌞

Use the nestopia Retroarch64 core. The messen core that Mjolnir Stone recommends has sound drops on my device.

Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES)

Emulator: retroarch64 core Snes9x - Current
Status: 🌞

Nintendo Game Boy (GB)

Emulator: retroarch64 core Gambatte
Status: 🌞

You can colorize games by running a game (hotkeys as set by RetroGameCorps):

• Push left + right stick buttons at the same time (if hotkey configured as suggested)
• Options
• GB Colorization. Auto works best in my experience.

Nintendo Game Boy Color (GBC)

Emulator: retroarch64 core Gambatte
Status: 🌞

Nintendo Game Boy Advanced (GBA)

Emulator: retroarch64 core mgba
Status: 🌞

Better graphics and performance, within a game:

• Push left + right stick buttons at the same time (if hotkey configured as suggested)
• Options
• Drivers - Video: vulkan
• Output - Video: vulkan
• Output - GPU Index: 0 - Mali-G52
• Video Filter: Normal 4x

Nintendo 64 (N64)

Emulator: standalone Mupen64Plus FZ emulator
Status: 🌞

M64Plus FZ is fine, including running on the native resolution of the rp3+ and wide screen! Buy the pro if you want to support the developers.

Nintendo GameCube (GC)

Emulator: standalone Dolphin MMJR2 / Handheld emulator
Status: 🌞/🌧

Most games seem to work fine, some have issues. The latest OTA firmware upgrades from Retroid bumped the performance of this system considerably.

Nintendo DS

Emulator: standalone melonDS emulator
Status: 🌞

melonDS standalone works fine (this is not the melonDS retroarch core), no need for the paid Drastic application (“your only option” according to Mjolnir Stone). Add melonDS from the Play Store, configure it (ROMs directory, controller binding, screen setup, hotkey for switching screens). The layout of the screen is confusingly under “Input” - “Layouts”. Create a new one with a big main screen and the smallest readable secondary screen (remember you can flip the screen with a hotkey).

For adding it to the RetroLauncher, go to the Emulation/Mame page, click on “Edit” and “New” on top:

• Name: melonDS
• Package: me.magnum.melonds
• Activity: me.magnum.melonds.ui.emulator.EmulatorActivity
• Rom path key: PATH

Nintendo 3DS

Emulator: standalone Citra MMJ emulator
Status: 🌞/🌧

The combination of the latest OTA firmware upgrades from Retroid and the latest Citra MMJ Antutu from github bumps the performance considerably. Lots of games that used to struggle, play fine nowadays. Another advantage of Citra MMJ is that you can play fullscreen and have a dedicated hot button for switching the screens.

There is a Vulkan build of the official Citra emulator that promises a speed bump of 40%, but it’s not merged yet.

Nintendo Wii

Emulator: standalone Dolphin MMJR2 / Handheld emulator
Status: 🌧

After following Mjolnir Stone’s guide, I used transtremm’s guide to set up the controller (it’s extremely confusing because the way you hold the Wii’s controller). You’ll end up tweaking settings on Dolphin MJJR2.

Sega Game Gear

Emulator: retroarch64 core Genesis Plus GX
Status: 🌞

Sega Mega Drive/Genesis

Emulator: retroarch64 core Genesis Plus GX
Status: 🌞

Some games, but not many, can enable the wide screen hack by using the retroarch64 core Genesis Plus GX/Wide. In the Daijishō launcher you can override the default core on game basis.

This is a short and updateable list of games I tried that worked fine (i.e. with not many artefacts) on wide mode:

• Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master

Sega Saturn

Emulator: retroarch64 core Yabause
Status: 🌞

The Yaba Sanshiro 2 app from the Play Store looks like broken nagware to me. While not perfect, the retroarch YabaUse core does a great job. You need to change the controllers settings in the core by removing the force analog stick configuration. Within a game:

• Push left + right stick buttons at the same time (if hotkey configured as suggested)
• Options
• Controls
• Port 1 Controls
• Device Type: Saturn 3D Pad
• Analog to Digital Type: Left Analog
• Back
• Save Core Remap File

For difficult games you can use this setting (or just leave it on):

• Push left + right stick buttons at the same time (if hotkey configured as suggested)
• Options
• Frameskip: ON

Sega Dreamcast

Emulator: standalone Redream emulator
Status: 🌞

Sony PlayStation 1 (PS1/PSX)

Emulator: standalone DuckStation emulator
Status: 🌞

Set a hotkey in Duckstation (e.g. right Trigger/Shoulder), swipe did not work for me. Map the “Axis Binding” to use the analogue sticks (e.g. camera) and in the in-game menu (press hotkey), select “Toggle Controller Analog Mode” to use them for movement.

Sony PlayStation 2 (PS2)

Emulator: standalone updated AetherSX2 emulator
Status: 🌞/🌧

Most games seem to work fine, but some have issues and need a bit of tweaking. Retroid bundles an older version of AetherSX2, without the Mali GPU support in the settings. Sadly the Play Store version is not an option any more for an upgrade: the developer of the AetherSX2 emulator first declared to stop the project and later changed his mind and re-uploaded it to the Play Store… with ads. Until a new project kicks off your best option is to use the 1.5-3886 version from the community discord server.

The latest OTA firmware upgrades from Retroid bumped the performance of this system considerably.

Some games need specific settings in AetherSX2. Lowering “EE Cycle Rate” and “EE Cycle Skip” do the trick most of the time. This trick from reddit does work when I tested:

Setting EE Cycle skip to 1, and EE Cycle rate to 130% with threaded presentation on is going to make games that may otherwise be unplayable run perfectly. I’ve had to bump EE Cycle skip up to 3 on some games, and EE cycle rate up to 180% on others, but generally that’s all it seems to take. (LittleMacedon)

You can even upscale the game afterwards to 2-3x or more the PS2 resolution.

Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP)

Emulator: standalone PPSSPP emulator
Status: 🌞

Regular PPSSPP works like a charm. Buy PPSSSPP Gold if you want to support the developers. You’ll need to remap the buttons in the Playstion order (△ ○ X ◻ ) within the emulator.

Game streaming

Status: 🌞

Tested with Steam Link from the desktop Linux Steam Client to the Retroid Pocket 3+.

Android Gaming

Status: 🌞

Tested with Netflix games.

(Of course, if you’re on LastPass, you’ll need to rotate all your passwords and add MFA where possible. And then move on. They fsck up.)

So what are the options for your passwords? You could:

1. pick a cloud provider with a better track record.
2. self-host your own password manager web service.
3. use a portable password manager with a browser plug-in. Manage the safe synchronisation between devices by setting up self-hosted file-hosting service.

I am not a fan of 1. Besides being a waiting game to find out if they make the same bad choices as LastPass, a service with millions of users is a very likely target. Point 2 is certainly better, but I prefer to add an extra line of defense.

This is my implementation of option 3:

• KeePassXC on my computers (Linux, macOS, Windows) with a very long, but easy to remember passphrase. There are several compatible clients for mobile devices and official plugins for browsers. An added advantage of using KeePassXC is that it can be used as the source of private SSH-keys (also secrets), so they don’t have to be kept on disk.
• Seafile in a container using an Encrypted Library. You don’t need a lot of resources for a small setup. You could easily host it on a rpi at home or a small cloud VM.

This setup gives you an encrypted password database that resides on an encrypted share accessible by a native clients, and when needed, a web interface. The web-browser plugin will handle web logins, with the sane default of only doing so after the user requires it (e.g. by clicking on the KeePassXC icon in the user field.).

(Mastodon post)

(In case you don’t know rakudo-pkg: it’s a project to provide native packages and relocatable builds of Rakudo for Linux distributions.)

The downward spiral of Travis since it was taken over by a Private Equity firm (there is a pattern here), triggered a long coming refactoring of the rakudo-pkg workflow. Until now the packages were created on Travis because it supported running Linux containers so we could tailor the build for each distribution/release. Almost at the same time JFrog announced it was sunsetting Bintray and other services popular with FOSS projects. The deb and rpm repos needed a new home.

Oh well, Travis and Bintray will be missed and certainly deserve our thanks for their service during years. It was difficult to imagine a better time to implement a few ideas from the good old TODO list.

From Travis to Github Actions

Github Actions is way faster than the post-P.E. Travis. Builds that took a few hours (we build around 25 distro/version combinations) now are done between 10 and 20 minutes. Not surprisingly this not only meant learning a complete new tool, but also a complete rewrite of the rakudo-pkg workflow.

Running on Github also means that every Github user can fork the repo including the rakudo-pkg Github workflows. One of the advantages of a rewrite is implementing new functionalities, like the new feature of rakudo-pkg to allow everyone to test the upstream MoarVM/NQP/Rakudo and zef commits/releases:

From Bintray to CloudSmith with Alpine repositories

Cloudsmith has a huge advantage over Bintray: it supports Alpine Linux repositories, making it a great addition to the rpm and deb repositories we already offer. The packages in the old repositories were GPG signed by BinTray. From now onwards, rakudo-pkg will be signed with his own key on Cloudsmith. Check the project’s README for instructions how to change your configuration. So far the experience with CloudSmith has been stellar. Their support is impressively responsive and they solve issues immediately, sometime while we were chatting about it.

From fpm to nfpm

rakudo-pkg created packages with the venerable fpm, written in Ruby. While the tool is extremely capable, I spent most of the time of a release getting fpm to build on new versions of distributions. The Ruby Gems ecosystem looks like a moving target. Enter nfpm, inspired with fpm but with the promise of a single binary. Written it Go, it’s more accessible to me to understand how it works and send fixes upstream if needed. The devs are also very responsive and fixed one issue I encountered extremely fast.

Feel free to open issues of send PRs if I missed something or if you have ideas to improve rakudo-pkg

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We’ve had a week of heated discussion within the Perl 6 community. It is the type of debate where everyone seems to lose. It is not the first time we do this and it certainly won’t be the last. It seems to me that we have one of those about every six months. I decided not to link to many reiterations of the debate in order not to feed the fire.

Before defining sides in the discussion it is important to identify the problems that drives the fears and hopes of the community. I don’t think that the latest round of discussions was about the Perl 6 alias in itself (Raku), but rather about the best strategy to answer to two underlying problems:

• Perl 5 is steadily losing popularity.
• Perl 6, despite the many enhancements and a steady growth, is not yet a popular language and does not seem to have a niche or killer app in sight yet to spur rapid adoption.

These are my observations and I don’t present them as facts set in stone. However, to me, they are the two elephants in the room. As an indication we could refer to the likes of TIOBE where Perl 5 fell off the top 10 in just 5 years (from 8th to 16th, see “Very Long Time History” at the bottom) or compare Github stars and Reddit subscribers of Perl 5 and 6 with languages on the same level of popularity on TIOBE.

Perl 5 is not really active on Github and the code mirror there has until today only 378 stars. Rakudo, developed on Github, has understandably more: 1022. On Reddit 11726 people subscribe to Perl threads (mostly Perl 5) and only 1367 to Perl 6. By comparison, Go has 48970 stars on Github and 57536 subscribers on Reddit. CPython, Python’s main implementation, has 20724 stars on Github and 290 308 Reddit subscribers. Or put differently: If you don’t work in a Perl shop, can you remember when a young colleague knew about Perl 5 besides by reputation? Have you met people in the wild that code in Perl 6?

Maybe this isn’t your experience or maybe you don’t care about popularity and adoption. If this is the case, you probably shrugged at the discussions, frowned at the personal attacks and just continued hacking. You plan to reopen IRC/Twitter/Facebook/Reddit when the dust settles. Or you may have lost your patience and moved on to a more popular language. If this is the case, this post is not for you.

I am under the impression that the participants of what I would call “cyclical discussions” do agree with the evaluation of the situation of Perl 5 and 6. What is discussed most of the time is clearly not a technical issue. The arguments reflect different –and in many cases opposing— strategies to alleviate the aforementioned problems. The strategies I can uncover are as follows:

Perl 5 and Perl 6 carry on as they have for longer than a decade and half

Out of inertia, this a status-quo view is what we’ve seen in practice today. While this vision honestly subscribes to the “sister languages narrative” (Perl is made up of two languages in order to explain the weird major version situation), it doesn’t address the perceived problems. It chooses to ignore them. The flip side is that with every real or perceived threat to the status-quo the debate resurges.

Perl 6 is the next major version of Perl

This is another status-quo view. The “sister languages narrative” is dead: Perl 6 is the next major version of Perl 5. While a lot of work is needed to make this happen, it’s work that is already happening: make Perl 6 fast. The target, however, is defined by Perl 5: It must be faster than the previous release. Perl consists of many layers and VMs are interchangeable: it’s culturally still Perl if you replace the Perl 5 runtime with one from of Perl 6. This view is not well received by many people in Perl 5 community, and certainly by those emotionally or professionally invested in “Perl”, with most of the time Perl meaning Perl 5.

Both Perl 5 and Perl 6 are qualified/renamed

This is a renaming view that looks for a compromise in both communities. The “sister languages narrative” is the real world experience and both languages can stand on their own feet while being one big community. By renaming both projects and keeping Perl in the name (e.g. Rakudo Perl, Pumpkin Perl) the investment in the Perl name is kept, while the next major version number dilemma is dissolved. However this strategy is not an answer for those in the Perl 6 community that experience that the (unjustified) reputation of Perl 5 is hurting Perl 6’s adoption. On the Perl 5’s side is some resentment why good old “Perl” needs to be renamed when Perl 6 is the newcomer.

Rename Perl 6

Perl 6’s adoption is hindered by Perl 5’s reputation and, at the same time, Perl 6’s major number “squatting” places Perl 5 in limbo. The “sister language narrative” is the real world situation: Perl 5 is not going away and it should not. The unjustified reputation of Perl 5 for some people is not something Perl 6 needs to fix.

In this option, only action of the Perl 6 community is required to solve the global problem. A “sisterly” rename will also benefit Perl 5. Liberating the next major version will not fix Perl 5’s decline, but it may be a small piece of the puzzle of the recovery. Renaming will result in more loosely coupled communities, but Perl communities are not mutually exclusive and the relation may improve without the version dilemma. The “sister language narrative” becomes a proud origin story. Mostly Perl 6 people heavily invested in the Perl and the Perl 6 brand opposed this strategy.

Alias Perl 6

While being very similar to the strategy above, this view is less ambitious as it only cares about Perl 6’s adoption is hindered by Perl 5’s reputation. It’s up to Perl 5 to fix their major version problem. It’s a compromise between (a number of) people in the Perl 6 community. It may or may not be a way to proof if an alias catches on, the renaming of Perl 6 should stay on the table.

Every single strategy will result in people being angry or disappointed because they honestly believe it hurts the strategy that they feel is necessary to alleviate Perl’s problems. We need to acknowledge that the fears and hopes are genuine and often related. Without going in detail to not reignite the fire (again), the tone of many of the arguments I heard this week from people opposing the Raku alias rung very close to me to the arguments Perl 5 users have against the Perl 6 name. Being a victim of injustice by people that don’t care for an investment of years and a feeling of not being listen to.

By losing the sight of the strategies in play, I feel the discussion degenerated very early in personal accusations that certainly leave scars while not resulting in even a hint of progress. We are not unique in this situation, see the recent example of the toll it took on Guido van Rossum. I can only sympathize with Larry is feeling these days.

While the heated debates may continue for years to come, it’s important to keep an eye on people that silently leave. The way to irrelevance is a choice.

(I disabled comments on this entry, feel free to discuss it on Reddit or the like. However respect the tone of this message and refrain from personal attacks.)

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rakudobrew, inspired by perlbrew, is a way to manage (and compile) different versions of rakudo. nine argued that it’s primarily meant as a tool for rakudo developers. Because of the increased complexity (e.g. when dealing with modules), it’s not targeted at end-users. While being a big fan of rakudobrew, I agree with nine.

The problem is that there are no Linux binaries on the download page (there are for MacOS and Windows), so users are stuck with building from source (it can be fun, but after a while it isn’t).

rakudo-pkg is a github project to help system administrators (and hopefully Rakudo release managers) to easily provide native Linux packages for end users. So far, I added support for creating Ubuntu 16.04 LTS amd64 and i386 packages and Centos 7 amd64. These are the systems I use the most. Feel free to add support for more distributions.

rakudo-pkg uses Docker. The use of containers means that there is no longer need for chasing dependencies and no risks of installing files all over your system. It also means that as long the building machine is a Linux 64-bit OS, you can build packages for all supported distributions.

Within the containers, rakudo-pkg uses fpm. The created packages are minimalistic by design: they don’t run any pre/post scripts and all the files are installed in /opt/rakudo. You’ll have to add /opt/rakudo/bin to your PATH. I also added two additional scripts to install Perl 6 module managers (both have similar functionalities):

install_panda_as_user.sh
install_zef_as_user.sh

If you just want to create native packages, just go to the bin directory and execute the run_pkgrakudo.pl command. In this case there is no need to locally build the Docker images: you’ll automatically retrieve the image from the rakudo namespace on Docker Hub. Of course, if you want to create the container images locally, you can use the supplied dockerfiles in the docker directory. Have a look at the README.md for more information.

You can find examples of packages created with rakudo-pkg here (they need to be moved to a more definitive URL)[dead link, the packages reside now at CloudSmith).

Have fun.

rakudo-pkg repo

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The Belgian ISPs Proximus and Telenet both provide access to a network of hotspots. A nice recent addition is the use of alternative ssids for “automatic” connections instead of a captive portal where you login through a webpage. Sadly, their support pages provide next to no information to make a safe connection to these hotspots.

Proximus is a terrible offender. According to their support page on a PC only Windows 8.1 is supported. Linux, OSX and Windows 8 (!) or 7 users are kindly encouraged to use the open wifi connection and login through the captive portal. Oh, and no certification information is given for Windows 8.1 either. That’s pretty silly, as they use EAP-TTLS. Here is the setup to connect from whatever OS you use (terminology from gnome-network-manager):

SSID: PROXIMUS_AUTO_FON
Security: WPA2 Enterprise
Authentication: Tunneled TLS (TTLS)
Anonymous identity: what_ever_you_wish_here@proximusfon.be
Certificate: GlobalSign Root CA
(in Debian/Ubuntu in /usr/share/ca-certificates/mozilla/)
Inner Authentication: MSCHAPv2
Usename: your_fon_username_here@proximusfon.be
Password: your_password_here
RADIUS server certificate (optional): radius.isp.belgacom.be

Telenet’s support page is slightly better (not a fake Windows 8.1 restriction), but pretty useless as well with no certificate information whatsoever. Here is the information needed to use TelenetWifree using PEAP:

SSID: TelenetWifree
Security: WPA2 Enterprise
Authentication: Protected EAP (PEAP)
Anonymous identity:what_ever_you_wish_here@telenet.be
Certificate: GlobalSign Root CA
(in Debian/Ubuntu in /usr/share/ca-certificates/mozilla/)
Inner Authentication: MSCHAPv2
Usename: your_fon_username_here@telenet.be
Password: your_password_here
RADIUS server certificate (optional): authentic.telenet.be

If you’re interested, screenshots of the relevant parts of the wireshark trace are attached here:

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VBoxManage modifyhd /path/to/<disk>.vdi --resize <size in megabytes>

e.g.:

VBoxManage modifyhd /home/me/VMs/Win7x86.vdi --resize 32000

In case you have snapshots you have to merge them first. The disk will be resized but the Operating System won’t see it yet. You need to expand it within the Guest OS.

In Windows you can go to “Computer Management - Storage - Disk Management” and extend your disk. On Linux, you need to boot from a live distribution and extend it with a tool like gparted.

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If you use USB disks for off-site backups, it’s a good idea to encrypt them:

• Install the cryptography software:

sudo apt-get install cryptsetup

• Write some random data to your disk (we will assume it’s called /dev/sdx, type “dmesg” after inserting the disk to figure out the device, or if it’s windows formatted and automounted have a look at the output of “mount”):

sudo dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sdx bs=4K

This will taken a long time, maybe a few days (create some IO). A good -shorter- compromise (a day) is:

sudo badblocks -c 10240 -s -w -t random -v /dev/sdx

• Create a new Linux partition table with cfdisk (create new partition table if asked, chose New and assign all the disk, use a primary partition).

sudo cfdisk /dev/sdx

• Setup a partition using fdisk (compatible with the new 4KB block size drives):

sudo fdisk -uc /dev/sdx

Command (m for help): d
Selected partition 1
Command (m for help): n

Command action
e   extended
p   primary partition (1-4)
p

Partition number (1-4): 1
First sector (2048-2930277167, default 2048):
Using default value 2048
Last sector, +sectors or +size{K,M,G} (2048-2930277167, default 2930277167):
Using default value 2930277167

Command (m for help): t
Selected partition 1
Hex code (type L to list codes): 83

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sdx: 1500.3 GB, 1500301910016 bytes
81 heads, 63 sectors/track, 574226 cylinders, total 2930277168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x4fabbfc4

Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdx1         2048  2930277167  1465137560   83  Linux

Command (m for help): w

The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.

• Create the encrypted partition. Make the passdphase long and difficult to guess:

sudo cryptsetup --verbose --verify-passphrase luksFormat /dev/sdx1

• Create a filesystem (I am using ext4, the chose device and label name is “disk5”, change it to your taste):

sudo cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sdx1 disk5
sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/disk5 -L disk5
sudo cryptsetup luksClose disk5

• Mount and umount it:

sudo /dev/mapper/disk5 /mnt
sudo umount /mnt
sudo cryptsetup luksClose disk5

That’s it!

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• Install the needed software.

sudo apt-get install cuetools ffmpeg flac shntool

• In case the source file is one unsplitted ape file, you can convert it to flac first.

ffmpeg -i sample.ape sample.flac

• In case the cue file is not a separate file, but included in the flac file itself, split them.

metaflac --show-tag=CUESHEET sample.flac | grep -v ^CUESHEET > sample.cue

(NB: The regular syntax is metaflac --export-cuesheet-to=sample.cue sample.flac, however often the cue file in embedded in a tag instead of the cuesheet block).

• Split the album flac file into separate tracks:

cuebreakpoints sample.cue | shnsplit -o flac sample.flac

• Copy the flac tags (if present):

cuetag sample.cue split-track*.flac

That’s it.

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