Pi4 - Can RetroPie use X/EGL in Raspbian?

bluestang

Greetings,

Due to boredom, I compiled RA with EGL to use both the KMS and X11 environments. The point I'm making is that if I can run RA in the full desktop environment on my Pi4 using EGL and X without significant issues (more below) why not the whole RetroPie build?

So the bottom-line question is can the build script options of RetroPie be updated for this use case? (run RetroPie on the RPiOS desktop environment)

Notes:
I did this on both the 64-bit RPiOS and 32-bit RPiOS. I had some frame drops in the 32-bit OS (21 of 7036) surprisingly, but I think that maybe OS related.

Also on the 64-bit RPiOS I also could use the Full KMS driver for both environments.

I'll reiterate that this was just was tested on a RPi4 only.

Rascas

@bluestang What is RA ?

Rascas

Ok, RetroArch. I will not comment about that because there is people here with more experience and knowledge than me, you will soon get the anwser.

mitu

@bluestang said in Pi4 - Can RetroPie use X/EGL in Raspbian?:

So the bottom-line question is can the build script options of RetroPie be updated for this use case? (run RetroPie on the RPiOS desktop environment)

Most of them probably already would work already, since they're using SDL2, which supports EGL for GL(ES) context creation and the build scripts - AFAIK - don't disable X11 support.

why not the whole RetroPie build?

What advantages would that bring ? We're not using X11 on the Pi/other SBCs, only on x86.

bluestang

@mitu said in Pi4 - Can RetroPie use X/EGL in Raspbian?:

@bluestang said in Pi4 - Can RetroPie use X/EGL in Raspbian?:

So the bottom-line question is can the build script options of RetroPie be updated for this use case? (run RetroPie on the RPiOS desktop environment)

Most of them probably already would work already, since they're using SDL2, which supports EGL for GL(ES) context creation and the build scripts - AFAIK - don't disable X11 support.

why not the whole RetroPie build?

What advantages would that bring ? We're not using X11 on the Pi/other SBCs, only on x86.

Evidently, again reiterating my point that this has only been tested on my Pi4, but just having a terminal window open in the RPiOS desktop does what I originally posted asking for. It appears you are correct but with the caveat that a terminal window needs to be opened prior.

bluestang

why not the whole RetroPie build?

What advantages would that bring ? We're not using X11 on the Pi/other SBCs, only on x86.

Other than the fact that users can still be in a desktop environment after they quit ES I'm not sure. As for the RPi4 though, it appears that it can use the X11/EGL so long as you have a terminal window open.

In fact if you open terminal and run ES from it, it pretty much all but guarantees that's the case and well it works.