Rocknix is an immutable Linux distribution for handheld gaming devices | Hacker News Reader

Rocknix is an immutable Linux distribution for handheld gaming devices

rocknix.org

156 pointsPaulHoule57 comments

This distro seems like a fork of JELOS based on it literally saying "Just Enough Linux Operating System (ROCKNIX)" on the front page. That spells out JELOS, not ROCKNIX lol.

I believe JELOS did die, so this is cool to see. I'll try flashing it to a new SD card and seeing what's up! Does anybody see info on what's difference? Also, is there any indication that this is a fork anywhere?

It's a form of JELOS picked up by contributers in the wake of the project getting dropped after Nintendo went after Citra. JELOS shipped with it by default.

Source: I've contributed to Rocknix and was around for the dissolution of JELOS and the fork.

Fork*

Some time ago it was written on their GitHub repository. Unfortunately JELOS stopped the development and Rocknix picked up the code and further maintained it. Hopefully it will last, but one should also say that the ecosystem is now also rich in alternatives to RetroPie itself. In fact, Batocera is also a strongly community-supported distribution for retrogaming

devs threw in m8c and its dependencies so you can hook up a teensy 4.1 flashed with Dirtywave’s headless M8 firmware, and make music on the handheld. 8 mono tracks, synths and samplers. it turns any handheld running this into a decent DAW

Installed on the RG34xxSP. My biggest issue was a common one. Correct bios, Correct bios placement and bad roms. Was able to run, Naomi, Atomiswave, CDI, PSP. Although not all Naomi games launched. Still can't get Daphne to work. I don't really need it but its always such a pain it becomes a point of pride. I also have the miyoo flip with Surwish. Daphane works but no CDI. Also the interface looks like l made it on a windows 98 using clip art. Otherwise it's the same. L prefer Rocknix. The other issue is easy to a access the retroarch files, etc. With rocknix you can't just plug the sd card into a windows device but with Surwish you can. I am guessing I'm not talking to noobies so you already know more then one way to access the files. If not ask here or Google. FYI. I don't know this dude or get paid but if you have the flip a guy named xs4all4me on Re dit came up with a fix for the stock os that runs ES and it's on Par with Surwish and with help could easily be the best. If l knew how ld help him.

Nice to see another alternative to the Linux gaming ecosystem. Bazzite also states handheld device support: https://bazzite.gg/

Not seeing the point of this, all that much. I'd rather run something like Mobian or pmOS (given the tiny, mobile-like screen on most of these devices) once the hardware support on mainline kernel is up to proper standards. A lightweight environment like sxmo would probably work quite well with the custom HID controls. And it would open up this whole emerging class of low-cost devices for doing a whole lot more than just the emulator-based "gaming" that they're used for out-of-the-box.

(Not all of them are low-cost, either; there's plenty of high-end handhelds with physical buttons and analog controls these days, that could probably be usefully repurposed for productive work.)

The whole point of my retro handhelds are to be an escape from this kind of complexity. I just want to sit down without any connection to the wider world and jump into some simple games like I did in my childhood. No distractions. They're for the times I want to escape 'productive work' for awhile.

Completely valid, but I got into it to tinker. Some of us do want to fiddle with things when it comes to retro gaming handhelds.

The upside of this is I can point my semi-technical but not Linux savvy parent at it and say "Press the install button".

As much as I love pmOS, it's just not there unfortunately.

Does Mobian work without a touch screen? Most of the kinds of devices Rocknix supports don't have one. Rocknix has a nice emulator front end out of the box, a media player, etc. and it all works with the game pad controls.

The Linux-on-mobile community is already exploring viable input methods for low-end devices with non-touch screens. Much of this effort can also be shared with the work involving TV-remote or gamepad-driven interfaces for the "media center" or "game console" use cases. Since Mobian is ultimately intended to just be a lightweight overlay over Debian, all of this work can easily benefit future versions of Mobian.

Bazzite was built as a "plug and play" distro to play games on steam, I think their main handheld target is the Steam Deck which has a 7.4 inches display

I’m running bazzite on amd kit and it’s blown me away how nice it is, everything so far has ”just worked”

Cool!

Is the name inspired by https://www.rockbox.org/ by any chance? That's what it reminded me of, especially given the ~similarities in purpose.

I think it's because the SoC hardware is made by Rockchip.

By the time Rocknix forked JELOS, it was available for far more than just Rocknix chips. I think it's a pun on immutable distros being set in stone, but I could be making that up. You can ask in the Discord if anyone is really that curious.

So they finally found a use case for those CDs made out of rock.

I totally forgot about RockBox until I saw this headline, like yourself. That kept my first-generation iPod Video running far longer than I would have expected.

Excited to use this on the Retroid Pocket 5. Currently using https://knulli.org/ on an RG35XX-H and found it to be really nice also

I have muOS on my H. I find it's better than Knulli because the wifi works reliably.

I also like the Syncthing integration, I can easily share saves and save states to my computer which is simple but feels very cool.

Spent today goofing around on it, and on the RGCubeXX, it's pretty busted.

Waking up from sleep has about a 1/3 chance of success, the other 2/3rds of the time the whole thing just hard-freezes and needs a full reboot, which leads into the two biggest issues I had with it:

1. When booting up on a "dirty" filesystem, there's a prompt to power down or press any key to bypass the integrity check. This has a two minute timeout, which is just a ridiculous amount of time to wait. (Also, pressing buttons doesn't actually seem to work to bypass the integrity check)

2. After a power cycle - regardless of whether the power-down was clean or dirty - you lose everything on the microSD other than the OS itself. All settings, all downloaded themes, all ROMs completely wiped. It's as if it's booting from a recovery partition or something. I tried numerous times (gracefully shutting down via the Start-button menu) and each time, it boots back up all wiped clean. Reimaged and started over from scratch - still the same issue.

The sleep issue seems to be a known thing and newer version will fix this by... removing the ability to sleep (see https://github.com/ROCKNIX/distribution/issues/1609).

Didn't see anything about the "clean" (more like "forcibly-sterilized") slate after power cycling.

Not ready for the big leagues, at least not on the CubeXX.

Different devices have different levels of support. Support for the H700 (the chipset in the CubeXX) has been added a few months ago and the project is still working out the kinks.

Unfortunately we're often limited by whatever blobs the manufacturer provides and whatever is supported by the mainline kernel, as you can imagine there's not a whole lot of people experimenting with the latest and the greatest on these devices so the project often runs into regressions when upgrading. I wish the situation was better but given the prices these devices are going for it's a small wonder they work as well as they do ;) Having (some) mainline support does mean that we'll see updates for years and years so with a bit of luck the situation will improve over time!

For reference the Rockchip devices (RK3266 and RK3566) have been supported for longer and offer a general smooth experience. I've had pretty good luck with my Powkiddy X55!

With regards to 2, just like bazzite and some other distros Rocknix uses a read-only filesystem, you can use mounts to allow certain paths to be overwritten. The default configuration strives to find a balance between allowing some customization and stability.

What you're describing does sound like a bug, it might be that some flag is set incorrectly. I would recommend dropping in at the Discord.

I appreciate your taking the time to reply!

And yeah, I was aware that H700 is the new kid on the block as it pertains to Rocknix. It's just a bit frustrating, especially because (imo) the Anbernic H700 devices are the ones most deeply in need of a solid custom firmware / OS option. The version of Retroarch included in the stock OS is lacking some pretty standard cores (no INTV, no Colecovision, no Speccy, no 3DO, and that's just the "tier 2"s that come to mind, not doing a deep dive into the even-more obscure stuff like the Sharp systems or CDi). And the default Ambernic OS itself is, charitably, "not-great" (why are there two entirely-separate menus to browse games from, why can't I re-scan without rebooting, the list goes on and on and on...)

> What you're describing does sound like a bug, it might be that some flag is set incorrectly.

Yeah, hopefully this isn't intended behavior. :) The ROMs are being samba'd right into the appropriate directories (I tried both "roms-internal" and the third option that isn't "roms-external" - forgot the name and already wiped the card). I can play them fine as long as I don't ever reboot, so it's not like they're just not copying. The themes are downloaded and installed solely through the frontend, I'm not doing anything too obscure or beardy.

It even does this on a fresh install, so the default theme is immediately replaced with the... even-more-default...? theme. That definitely threw me for a loop on the first go-round. The "more-default-than-default" theme actually doesn't look too bad (sort of has a Cosmic Smash [1] vibe), but a lot of text breaks outside the confines of its boxes and it lacks any cursor highlighting in menus, so without screenshots you have no idea which option (or game) you're selecting.

> I would recommend dropping in at the Discord.

I don't use Discord, but I'm happy to file Github issues as long as you think it'd be non-redundant / a productive use of my time. Otherwise, by all means feel free to link my comments in the Discord!

[1] https://imgur.com/a/xQdepbN

Anybody recommend the best (anecdotally) device to run this on?

I have a steam deck but I want something smaller and less power hungry for retro emulation but can run everything.

I have an anbernic rg35xx h - it's a great device; totally recommend it. It plays games up to ps1 with easy, it also works good in most psp games, maybe with a little frameskip on more resource intensive games.

Very good controllers and firm design. Great value for its price!

I have an Anbernic RG35xx too - another cool thing alongside the emulators is that it runs Pico-8, which is pretty cool on a little physical gameboy-esque device.

I've got a few from PowKiddy. They're all based on the Rockchip RK3566 SoC.

There are some other chips coming out that have decent Linux support too, but the majority of devices will have that one still.

You've got more than one? What's the reason for multiple devices all based on the same generation of SoC?

They're fun little tinker devices, cheap enough that you can get multiple and play around with different form factors or loan out to friends

The Anbernic RG35XX lineup are all good devices that are fairly budget friendly ($40-80 depending on sales and where you buy from). They all share very similar specs, just different layouts and controls. I'm partial to the RG35XX SP's clam shell form-factor, but other people like the RG35XX Plus that's akin to a gameboy color layout (but smaller) or the RG35XX H that's similar to a nintendo switch lite layout, including joysticks (but smaller). They can handle PS1 and older without any issues, plus some Dreamcast and N64 games.

On the higher end ($300-400), the Ayn Odin 2 is really the device to beat, although it's bigger, somewhere in between a Switch and a Steam Deck. It can handle some PS2, PSP, and even nintendo switch games - see https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XaPYEyTinKk7F2uTfgSD... for a community-sourced list of compatible games.

Retroid also has some nice higher end devices around $200-300. I have a Retroid Pocket 3+ that I really like, and while it's not compatible with Rocknix, some of their newer devices are.

Before making a purchase, check out the Retro Game Corps, he reviews prettymuch all of these devices and can help you narrow down what you want: https://retrogamecorps.com/ or https://www.youtube.com/c/retrogamecorps

What system do you want to emulate up to?

If most PS2 games and Gamecube games are good enough, you can grab an Odroid Go Ultra cheaply. It's what I used and suited my needs.

Keep SteamOS on your SteamDeck and come join the SBC debate and in https://old.reddit.com/r/SBCGaming/

First you need to define “everything”. It’s easy to get a device that runs every 2D retro game ever. But, moving up the 3D emulation ladder can move right past the SteamDeck into more power hungry devices.

Most RK3566-devices are a good bet. I have the Powkiddy RGB10 MAX 3 which runs Rocknix great.

The website has a page listing supported devices: https://rocknix.org/devices/

I am personally not familiar with any of the names there.

Any true benefit benefit of using this over Bazzite or SteamOS coupled with EmuDeck? I am not an expert in the space, but I am about to build a machine and install Bazzite.

I don't believe there's Bazzite or SteamOS available for ARM devices, which make up most of the "portable handheld" market in terms of device variety

You're right, but I'll mention there's already work in place for getting some of the Ublue images on ARM, so Bazzite ARM is a future possibility

https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/bluefin-lts-alpha-f...

Installing SteamOS on other devices:

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/1B71-EDF2-EB6D-2B...

You'll note it specifies AMD devices, i.e. x86-64 architecture

Right! Sorry. Hopefully soon: https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/steamrt/steamrt/-/commit/5833fa...

Gotcha, I missed that. Thank you.

It's meant to work with a limited niche set of devices: https://rocknix.org/devices/

I see that it works for the cheapie R36s's you see all over temu and aliexpress. Has anyone installed it on one of them?

If so, how is the performance compared to ArkOS?

Performance is better in some cases but worse in others (mostly Dreamcast and other 3D sfuff).

In general Rockchip does offer a more modern and streamlined experience though, the software is generally more up-to-date and it has some nice quality of life features such as a theme and bezel downloader. If you have a spare microSD card definitely give it a try ;)

I wish the Nintendo Switch were supported. I have Ubuntu on mine (and Fedora is another option) so could tweak around to achieve something similar but an out of the box solution would be better.

Hahaha, this is unlikely because the predecessor project was collateral damage from nintendos anti emulator crusade.

By that logic Nintendo will go after Ubuntu and Fedora too

No it’s not ‘my logic’ the same exact project literally shut down before because of this situation.

The author of the project made the decision to drop the project after Nintendo went after Yuzu/Citra, the latter was in JELOS by default. I assume they felt like distributing Citra put a target on their back and I don't blame them. Not everyone has millions of dollars to give Nintendo.

Neither Ubuntu or Fedora distribute Yuzu/Citra by default and neither platforms exist exclusively for the emulation of Nintendo's systems using what are apparently radioactive emulators. Neither Ubuntu or Fedora advertised that they include Citra, and neither featured screenshots of it prominently along with detailed wiki pages on how to use it.

You can never be sure with those guys

I don't they will dare tbh. I would expect Big Techs to show how dwarf Nintendo is if do an attempt. Big distros do a lot of free work for them.

Ironically enough, maybe the reason why Nintendo is so litigious is because the OG Big Tech (IBM) hit Japan really hard with lawsuits in the early days of the industry.

Well Nintendo was shown the hard way in the 80's that if they didn't protect their IP they would be doomed.

I run a Rocknix fork with Citra. It is easy to add your own packages. In fact, if you have a copy of the old JELOS tree, someone might have already packaged Yuzu for it before the Nintendo suit.

Apparently minecraft runs better on linux on switch than native

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