Emudeck worth it?

[Glug nugly]

Id like to move my emulations from my pc to my deck.
But ive heard so much good but also heard it can cause alot of technical issues for the system

[deaddoof]

What technical issues are you talking about? Linux pretty much support most emulators from day one.

[Glug nugly]

Originally posted by deaddoof:

What technical issues are you talking about? Linux pretty much support most emulators from day one.

For the most part I’ve heard (from few places mind you) when you uninstall it while having the power tools plug in installed it causes issues for your battery like ridiculous predicted charge times

[Mahjik]

My recommendation, think about what you might want to emulate. If you only plan to emulate a few things, only install what you need. If you plan to emulate a LOT of different things, Emudeck may make sense.

FWIW, it was a pain to install when I did it about a year ago. It might be better now. In the end, it was not worth the effort for my needs. For what I had planned to do, all I needed was RetroArch and I should have just stuck with that.

[Haruspex]

All Emudeck does is download and automatically configure each emulator from the usual repositories. It's the same as if you downloaded each emulator and configured it manually, it's just all the labor of doing that is automated.

The worst part of Emudeck I think is the ROM manager. The interface is a little clunky, but it's easy enough to figure out, and I would still rather use ROM manager than import each game into Steam manually.

As for "technical issues"... Like what? The only thing I'll say is that the Steam Deck is a PC. It's not a console. And like any PC you sometimes will be expected to do some troubleshooting. It's not some curated, spoon fed experience here. You are given a ton of freedom and flexibility, and that can be very powerful as long as you don't hang yourself with all the slack you are provided.

[Hiro]

Originally posted by Sterbin:

Emudeck worth it?

YES!

Originally posted by Sterbin:

Id like to move my emulations from my pc to my deck.
But ive heard so much good but also heard it can cause alot of technical issues for the system

Install Emudeck without the system changes (e.g. DeckyLoader).
You can install those later if you desire.

[Albee]

Use RetroDeck (https://retrodeck.net/) instead, IMO. It comes in a flatpak which can be installed from desktop mode via the recommended install application, and handles everything in an isolated fashion without cluttering up your install with a bunch of individual direct linux installations.

It also isolates all your ROMS, config, and metadata to a folder either in your home directory or in a location of your choosing (think, SD card if you prefer), which stays put even if you decide to remove RetroDeck (by easily uninstalling the flatpak).

You then add RetroDeck as an external application in Steam, and run it from handheld mode, which includes a recommended RetroDeck controller layout that handles all the emulator controls as needed.

EmuDeck and other similar installs try to add all your emulator ROMs as individual games in Steam. RetroDeck does NOT have that option. If you prefer that for some reason, then it might not work for you. For me, I prefer to open RetroDeck (which uses EmulationStation for displaying your ROM library) and choose my ROM-based games from within there, not clutter up my Steam Games list with ROMs.

So far I love it, and see no reason to switch another method, but if I did, it would be easy to remove, and my ROMs/metadata are safe.

[Hiro]

Originally posted by Albee:

Use RetroDeck (https://retrodeck.net/) instead, IMO. It comes in a flatpak which can be installed from desktop mode via the recommended install application, and handles everything in an isolated fashion without cluttering up your install with a bunch of individual direct linux installations.

It also isolates all your ROMS, config, and metadata to a folder either in your home directory or in a location of your choosing (think, SD card if you prefer), which stays put even if you decide to remove RetroDeck (by easily uninstalling the flatpak).

You then add RetroDeck as an external application in Steam, and run it from handheld mode, which includes a recommended RetroDeck controller layout that handles all the emulator controls as needed.

EmuDeck and other similar installs try to add all your emulator ROMs as individual games in Steam. RetroDeck does NOT have that option. If you prefer that for some reason, then it might not work for you. For me, I prefer to open RetroDeck (which uses EmulationStation for displaying your ROM library) and choose my ROM-based games from within there, not clutter up my Steam Games list with ROMs.

So far I love it, and see no reason to switch another method, but if I did, it would be easy to remove, and my ROMs/metadata are safe.

Interesting project.
But I have concerns about stuff that I cannot control.

Maybe you can help me here.
For example: Yuzu, with the EmuDeck I can easily swap the AppImage file for the EA version and / or update / downgrade it as I need.

How can I do the same on RetroDeck, since everything is inside their package?

[Albee]

Originally posted by Hiro:

Originally posted by Albee:

<snip>

Interesting project.
But I have concerns about stuff that I cannot control.

Maybe you can help me here.
For example: Yuzu, with the EmuDeck I can easily swap the AppImage file for the EA version and / or update / downgrade it as I need.

How can I do the same on RetroDeck, since everything is inside their package?

I can only tell you my experience with: a) SNES/NES/Genesis emulators, which use cores from RetroArch and are easily configurable during runtime and b) Dolphin, which can be configured from RetroDeck (really emulation station) using a submenu that kicks you out to advanced config. For the latter, I am able to directly run dolphin and modify the config (like turning on 16x AF and 8x MSAA, etc. or modifying external controller config).

I assume the same would be true of Yuzu, if you need to do custom configs there. See their docs here for more details: https://retrodeck.readthedocs.io/en/latest/wiki_emulator_guides/yuzu-guide/

At the very least, installing it and getting it going is extremely painless, so you can give it a spin and see how it goes. I believe from Desktop Mode you can access the install directory and directly modify configs for Yuzu or other emulators as well. Changing versions might be a problem, though.

[tfk]

Worth it is kinda irrelevant as emudeck is free.

[[?]legit]

I remember the installation from emudeck was easy, but what followed was rather painful.

I'd just install the emulators that you need one by one, instead of all at once. It's better to get familiar how a specific emulator works, so that you know what to do when you install roms or do advanced stuff. With emudeck you can get everything at the same time, which seems like a great deal, but you may need to spend more time on adjusting the folders, fixing settings inside an emulator.

[Hiro]

Originally posted by Albee:

I can only tell you my experience with: a) SNES/NES/Genesis emulators, which use cores from RetroArch and are easily configurable during runtime and b) Dolphin, which can be configured from RetroDeck (really emulation station) using a submenu that kicks you out to advanced config. For the latter, I am able to directly run dolphin and modify the config (like turning on 16x AF and 8x MSAA, etc. or modifying external controller config).

I assume the same would be true of Yuzu, if you need to do custom configs there. See their docs here for more details: https://retrodeck.readthedocs.io/en/latest/wiki_emulator_guides/yuzu-guide/

At the very least, installing it and getting it going is extremely painless, so you can give it a spin and see how it goes. I believe from Desktop Mode you can access the install directory and directly modify configs for Yuzu or other emulators as well. Changing versions might be a problem, though.

Thanks for the answer.

Yea, I don't think this is for me.
It keeps all binaries inside the Flatpak package.

modules:
  - name: retrodeck
    buildsystem: simple
    build-commands:
      - cp -rn files/* /app
    sources:
    - type: archive
      url: https://artifacts.retrodeck.net/artifacts/RetroDECK-Artifact.tar.gz
      sha256:  04f3368e2d7e44748c14d4c97f143b5a0e5b31d5ea84436168c93ff7d1e67204

Also, I'm not sure if this is allowed by all emulators licenses.
Will stick with EmuDeck for now and keep an eye on this project as an alternative.

[Albee]

Originally posted by Hiro:

Originally posted by Albee:

I can only tell you my experience with: a) SNES/NES/Genesis emulators, which use cores from RetroArch and are easily configurable during runtime and b) Dolphin, which can be configured from RetroDeck (really emulation station) using a submenu that kicks you out to advanced config. For the latter, I am able to directly run dolphin and modify the config (like turning on 16x AF and 8x MSAA, etc. or modifying external controller config).

I assume the same would be true of Yuzu, if you need to do custom configs there. See their docs here for more details: https://retrodeck.readthedocs.io/en/latest/wiki_emulator_guides/yuzu-guide/

At the very least, installing it and getting it going is extremely painless, so you can give it a spin and see how it goes. I believe from Desktop Mode you can access the install directory and directly modify configs for Yuzu or other emulators as well. Changing versions might be a problem, though.

Thanks for the answer.

Yea, I don't think this is for me.
It keeps all binaries inside the Flatpak package.

modules:
  - name: retrodeck
    buildsystem: simple
    build-commands:
      - cp -rn files/* /app
    sources:
    - type: archive
      url: https://artifacts.retrodeck.net/artifacts/RetroDECK-Artifact.tar.gz
      sha256:  04f3368e2d7e44748c14d4c97f143b5a0e5b31d5ea84436168c93ff7d1e67204

Also, I'm not sure if this is allowed by all emulators licenses.
Will stick with EmuDeck for now and keep an eye on this project as an alternative.

Yeah, flatpaks by nature include everything in the package, so trying to run a specific version of one of the emulators would not be straightforward with RetroDeck.

EmuDeck runs a bunch of scripts to install everything invdividually, so you might have more leeway to modify that installation.

Good luck!

[Hiro]

Originally posted by Albee:

Yeah, flatpaks by nature include everything in the package

It don't need to be.

Zoom is an example (https://github.com/flathub/us.zoom.Zoom/blob/master/us.zoom.Zoom.json) where the application is downloaded at install time.

It uses "extra-data" for the source.
This avoid bundling together, which also avoid license problems.
And allow for customization to some extent.

I don't know if you are a Contributor on that project, if you are maybe you can have a look :)
I did not know this project before yesterday, to make a PR I need to understand better the project and it will take some time.

If not, I know this is not the place for this discussion.

[Albee]

Originally posted by Hiro:

Originally posted by Albee:

Yeah, flatpaks by nature include everything in the package

It don't need to be.

Zoom is an example (https://github.com/flathub/us.zoom.Zoom/blob/master/us.zoom.Zoom.json) where the application is downloaded at install time.

It uses "extra-data" for the source.
This avoid bundling together, which also avoid license problems.
And allow for customization to some extent.

Ah, thanks for the correction. I'm not too familiar with flatpaks (I maintain a headless Arch linux server of my own and only use pacman there), so I was mostly talking from a high level understanding.

Originally posted by Hiro:

I don't know if you are a Contributor on that project, if you are maybe you can have a look :)
I did not know this project before yesterday, to make a PR I need to understand better the project and it will take some time.

If not, I know this is not the place for this discussion.

Haha, no I'm not a contributor, I just found it when setting up my Steam Deck last week, but that's a good point. I haven't looked into the license rules for applications included in the package, but it would be worth posting something on their github site if you think they're in violation: https://github.com/XargonWan/RetroDECK

[D. Flame]

I have literally never heard a single person say that it caused technical complications before this thread. Are you sure that you are not just confusing this with "installing Windows"? Because you can install Windows on the Steam Deck, but that actually does cause technical complications.