For the use that I make of the Rasperry Pi, which I partly do tests and partly use Media Center and play, the best operating system that exists is Twister OS. Although it ends in “OS” (Operating System), what it really is is a vitaminized Raspberry Pi OS, with useful software and special themes or “skins”. A software that is installed and working by default is RetroPie, and the experience is, as far as the board goes, exquisite. Can RetroPie be installed on desktop computers? Yes, but officially and for Linux it is only supported on Debian-based systems. Luckily, Arch Linux users also have ArchyPie-Setup.
Because yes, it is clear that in Arch Linux we have everything we need to achieve the same as in RetroPie. In fact, the software mostly works with EmulationStation, RetroArch and other emulators, but the great thing about RetroPie is that it is install and use. If an Arch Linux user installs EmulationStation, he will realize that he can't do anything if he doesn't manually edit the config file, too tedious for my liking (and I guess I'm not the only one). What ArchyPie-Setup does is make things easier, and allow us have "rpie" on Arch Linux.
ArchyPie-Setup, a simple but powerful script to install RetroPie on Arch
The use of this script is very simple, as we read in your official website. The only thing is that, depending on the computer on which we use it, the installation will take time, something understandable if we take into account that you are going to install many emulators “out of the box”. We just need to have the equipment updated, git and run the script, which we will do with these commands:
Of the above, the first updates the repositories, necessary for the dependencies; the second, if we don't have it, install git; the third clones the repository; with the fourth we enter the ArchyPie-Setup folder; and with the fifth we launch the script. What we will see will be more or less what we see when installing it on the Raspberry Pi: it builds and downloads everything necessary. When he stops working, we just have to go to the start menu and search for “rpie”. When launching it we will enter EmulationStation and we can start playing.
No roms or bios included
Like RetroPie, ArchyPie-Setup does not include games or bios. We have to add them on our own. The folder is created in our personal directory, and if we want to move it, we have to go into the settings to indicate where to look for the games, roms and others. "Peccata minuta" if we take into account that we can play RetroPie, with everything configured, on Arch Linux, in the same way that we would on Debian, Ubuntu or Linux Mint.
Thank you very much for this article. He had been looking for a way to do this for a while because it is one of the few things that he did not find in AUR