LibRetro not yet ready for Ubuntu 18.04

Neo-Rio

@aammeloot

Just tried switching to Wayland (from the settings cog on the login screen)

Yep that works. Seems like a good workaround for the time being.

rthorntn

On 18.04 I was getting a freeze on loading the ROM, using Wayland fixed it.

mitu

Have you tried switching the RA video driver to opengl or vulkan to see if it would work without Wayland ?

thelostsoul

Thats sad to hear. I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 18.04 on my main pc and was thinking about to install RetroPie on it. If its not working correctly under xorg, I will not using it sadly. Didn't it work with older Ubuntu versions?

In the official Ubuntu repository is Retroarch. How does this differ? I see it have a different UI than RetroPie.

mitu

@thelostsoul said in LibRetro not yet ready for Ubuntu 18.04:

Thats sad to hear. I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 18.04 on my main pc and was thinking about to install RetroPie on it. If its not working correctly under xorg, I will not using it sadly.

It works, you just need to adjust the video driver to be different than Wayland.

Didn't it work with older Ubuntu versions?

Yes, it did, however the 18.04 is the first one to ditch Unity and use Gnome again, so I think they changed something also on the X.org/Wayland side.

In the official Ubuntu repository is Retroarch. How does this differ? I see it have a different UI than RetroPie.

The RetroArch version in 18.04 is 1.4.1 (https://packages.ubuntu.com/bionic/retroarch) which is a quite old. However the RA team provides their own packages - either in flatpak format or directly via their PPA: https://docs.libretro.com/guides/install-gnu/.

thelostsoul

@mitu ok thank you for this info. I really was discouraged when I saw this thread. I'm still not ready for, but I will try RetroPie on my pc, if I can use it stable without Wayland.

Neo-Rio

I tried retropie again on a laptop using nvidia graphics and non-free nvidia driver.
Libretro games worked but the nvidia non-free additional driver caused system instability and the system would eventually crash

BuZz

On my desktop PC with 18.04 Xubuntu using Intel integrated graphics and xorg, everything seems to work fine. Unfortunately I am unable to reproduce the problems on this thread.

sabrecheeky

@buzz

I am running a udoo x86 hobby board, with Ubuntu MATE. Everything ran fine in retropie under 17.10, but my upgrade to 18.04 has broken it. It freezes right at the start of the game emulation - the controller indicator in the bottom left of the screen is still there, and I can sometimes get to a splash screen, but it is rarely running more than a fraction of a second. Wayland is not an option in the MATE desktop, iirc. Anyone found any other fixes?

mitu

@sabrecheeky said in LibRetro not yet ready for Ubuntu 18.04:

Anyone found any other fixes?

Change the RetroArch video driver to gl or sdl and try again.

esmith13

@mitu said in LibRetro not yet ready for Ubuntu 18.04:

@sabrecheeky said in LibRetro not yet ready for Ubuntu 18.04:

Anyone found any other fixes?

Change the RetroArch video driver to gl or sdl and try again.

That temp fix works for Lubuntu as well (which does not have wayland support) but unfortunately does not allow shader use.

sabrecheeky

@mitu Thanks - That got it going for now! (Although it still has a random 'bug' which causes the desktop to change the audio settings from HDMI to built in audio, which does not exist. - I thought this was a 17.10/pulseaudio thing - shame upgrading hasn't fixed it.)

Thanks again for your (incredibly swift) reply and help!

mitu

@sabrecheeky It wasn't me that suggested this, but a another forum user, I'm just using his/her suggestion. For curiosity, which setting worked for you ?

sabrecheeky

@mitu sdl2. Just playing round with it, I seem to losing parts of the display from the top and bottom in gba, psx and spectrum emulators I've quickly tried - can't seem to be able to fix that (My TV says the display is changing to 'VGA' - ah, the memories!) Also, I can't use my keyboard in the spectrum (lr-fuse) - although that could be unrelated to the driver. I'll keep messing about, see what I can find in the meantime!

Neo-Rio

How do we change the retroarch video driver anyways? Is there an easy way? Just a config file to edit?

mitu

@neo-rio You can edit the global retroarch.cfg file or use the configuration editor and change the video driver - https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Configuration-Editor/.

praetorian55

I'm a bit late to the party but thanks to this discussion I was able to get my dedicated build working with the Sway window manager and Wayland in ubuntu server 18.04 after having trouble with X

That said, I accidently went back into X last night and was surprised that it worked! The only change I had made was updating retroarch and cores to the latest builds (manually copying them to the retropie folders) in order to use the runahead feature. Figured I would share in case anyone was still having issues with 18.04 and x86 retropie

mitu

@praetorian55 1.7.3 is installable from RetroPie now - albeit from source. Which video card do you have installed ?

praetorian55

@mitu said in LibRetro not yet ready for Ubuntu 18.04:

@praetorian55 1.7.3 is installable from RetroPie now - albeit from source. Which video card do you have installed ?

Awesome, that makes it easier to manage - I was just excited to try out the runahead feature in 1.7.2 and 1.7.3 and saw the x86/18.04 problem people were experiencing seemed to be fixed.

I'm working with Intel hd4000 integrated graphics.

thelostsoul

@praetorian55 Thank you for reporting this. As I will not switch to Wayland soon, I hope it gets working with X. So, you gave me hope. :-)