EmuDeck 2.1: Steam Deck emulation installer | Hacker News Reader

EmuDeck 2.1: Steam Deck emulation installer

emudeck.com

120 pointsbrandrick25 comments

I've had my Steam Deck for a year, and what I've done since I got it is simply install the RetroArch flatpak (via the Discover app), and use that as a front end for all my emulation.

It doesn't add emulated games to the menu, but frankly, I think I prefer it that way, and I don't have to worry about things contaminating future SteamOS updates - everything is silo'd away.

It works great, I recommend it.

A similar option is doing this via RetroDeck[0] which is a flatpak wrapper around EmulationStation, which includes RetroArch, and includes several more emulators not included in the RA flatpak.

[0]: https://github.com/XargonWan/RetroDECK

Going through the game UI has some advantages, like the Steam native controller rebinding for individual games.

All this tool is doing is adding a bunch of .desktop files in the right place and setting up the folders necessary for the emulator. It's not touching the root partition that gets updated with the rest of SteamOS.

I’ve spent a fair bit of time with EmuDeck and as far as I can tell, it doesn’t pollute your system install at all. It’s very lightweight. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it’s basically just a bunch of bash scripts that configure everything with sane defaults, plus a lightweight GUI.

I do the same. I like keeping emulated games separate.

I also add it as a non-Steam game to access it while in the Steam front-end and allowing for controller options. I'm guessing you might do the same too.

Retroarch is also on Steam itself.

I think there's more cores/plugins via the flatpak than there are via Steam. However, I think the Steam version gets steam cloud saves.

> EmuDeck Compressor

> Compress your games using the EmuDeck Compressor tool, saving up to 70% disk space!

Is this better than using btrfs with compression? Maybe on some critical directories (chattr +c)

https://gitlab.com/popsulfr/steamos-btrfs

I think the EmuDeck compressor is for compressing to emulator supported formats, like the RVZ format used in Dolphin for example. I'm not sure how it compares to btrfs, but RVZ is supposed to keep good performance while compressing garbage data in a way that maintains compatibility.

EmuDeck compressor is not simply compressing games, it is converting them to more efficient formats (i.e. instead of a raw disk image, it removes the sectors of the images that are effectively unused)

FAQ is missing a very important Q/A.

Q: Is EmuDeck Open Source?

A: Yes, it is GPL-3 Licensed[0].

0. https://github.com/dragoonDorise/EmuDeck

Too many choices on the initial setup.

It feels like it's meant for hardcore retro gamers. I spent way too much time on it and didn't get anywhere.

Emulation is most of the time a perpetual WIP. I guess you did it right.

I've changed the URL above from https://overkill.wtf/emudeck-2-1-update/ to the project home page, since the project doesn't appear to have been discussed on HN before.

From the title I thought it was a way to emulate a Steam deck on a computer and was a bit confuse at what the use case would be.

You can emulate a Steam Deck easily on any computer. Just boot up the ISO: https://store.steampowered.com/steamos/download/?ver=custom

AKAIK, SteamOS 3 hasn't been released publicly, and this is SteamOS 2 which is Debian based instead of Arch

You can use https://github.com/HoloISO/holoiso though

Or just launch Steam with the command line argument that gives it the Steam Deck UI

You can find the packages here with at least some of the sources here https://steamdeck-packages.steamos.cloud/archlinux-mirror/

Wouldn’t the GPL require them to publish SteamOS 3? At least the source code, if not the ISO.

Like with Android, I think only parts of the software that's GPL licensed, like the Linux kernel. It looks like this repo keeps a list of the license violations: https://gitlab.com/evlaV/holo-PKGBUILD#third-party-packagesr...

Anyone knows what evlaV are labelling as "obfuscated"? I doubt valve released actually obfuscated source code. Are they complaining that the source is available as src.tar.gz containing patches+original source (more or less like Arch manages it) instead of git repository with history?

The current dev instructions for the Deck could use some improvements: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/steamdeck/testing

Then again, emulating the performance may be very tough because a lot of it depends on setting the right TDP on a very specific chip. I like the recommendation to make sure it runs well on a slightly slower CPU, that should help with battery life on the actual Deck.

(Submitted title was "Steam Deck emulation installer EmuDeck 2.1 launched")

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