Raspbian VS Retropie?

fretman

Hi, I will be getting the remainder of my parts build tomorrow. I plan on putting the Retropie image onto the board. I know that with Raspbian I can use menus to check the CPU temp, ram capacity, storage space, etc. My question is, with Retropie, am I able to do those type of functions? I checked the NET and it appears I cannot do those functions with Retropie installed. Either that, or I just didn't find the right information. The reason I ask is I bought the Raspberry Pi 4 board with 4gb of ram. My friend looked at the board and told me the codes on the RAM chip indicate that it's only 2gb of ram. So I would like a way of finding just how much ram I have on-onboard once I get an OS set up. Thanks for your help.

RandoNoOne

@fretman Im pretty sure such specs can be found in retropie docs, please the help and support board is destined to problems which cannot be arbitrarily found on retropie docs

fretman

@randonoone , thanks for the heads up.

mitu

@fretman If you exit EmulationStation, the welcome message shown on the console will print the total / available memory on your system:

 ...
 Memory.............: 3536MB (Free) / 3787MB (Total)
...

Note that RetroPie is based on Raspbian (now named Raspberry Pi OS) so you can install any utilities available in Raspbian.

sleve_mcdichael

@fretman said in Raspbian VS Retropie?:

I know that with Raspbian I can use menus to check

The default RetroPie image is built on top of Raspbian Lite, which does not include the PIXEL desktop environment. You can install PIXEL yourself, manually or automatically, with the instructions here.

Note that you cannot run PIXEL and Retropie at the same time. You will need to log out of PIXEL completely to start EmulationStation

fretman

@sleve_mcdichael , @mitu , thank you both. I'll take a look at both options. I might just decide to install Raspberry Pi OS and play around with it for awhile before re-imaging to RetroPie.

4RetroPieTFT

@fretman always you can hace Pi OS with RetroPie like a simple app in the menu(just in pi4, in pi3 you have to exit from desktop with

ctrl+alt+f2

And write:

emulationstation

In pi 4 de desktop entry is:

geany /usr/share/applications/Retropie.desktop
Or
nano /usr/share/applications/Retropie.deskto

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=RetroPie
Icon=rpsetup
Exec=emulationstation
Categories=Application;Game;
Terminal=true

In geany just clic the diskette icon to save.
In nano :

Ctrl+o to save (vowel o).
Enter to confirm the name of file.
Ctrl+x to exit

The Icon you can just use the ones in retropiemenu or just create one you or google one.
Using one of retropiemenu folder:

sudo cp /home/pi/RetroPie/retropiemenu/icons/rpsetup.png /usr/share/pixmaps/

If you choose another one, make the change in the

Icon= name_of_you_desire_logo

Then you will have a nice Launcher from:

Raspberry》Games》RetroPie

Anothe advantage is you can run supermodel3 in fullscreen(see the forum the post of mechafatnick)

fretman

@4retropietft , thank you. I'm going to have to look deeper into that and get familiar with it. My exposure to Raspberry Pi has only been a few weeks. I will experiment with what you gave me. It sounds like I'm able to have a dual OS running?

dankcushions

@4retropietft note that launching via the desktop is not supported: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/FAQ/#where-did-the-desktop-go

4RetroPieTFT

@fretman not dual OS, that is another thing that you can make with installers like PINN or berryboot.
What i told you is that you install raspberry pi os with desktop and then compile retropie in it, but you don't setup to start automatically in retropie.
The official retropie image is built in on top of raspberry pi os lite(pi os without desktop enviroment) and boot directly to emulationstation at start.
I hope you can understand what i intend to tell.

4RetroPieTFT

@dankcushions and what i do it every day in my pi os Sir ? I read a lot of answer saying that!, but i cant understood why answer that! If only have to install pi os compile retropie with the official instructions, and look to not answer that the wrong way! With respect, but from pi 4b, we can compile retropie in pi os and just open it launching emulationstation from the desktop enviroment, that post is very old. For that i clarify that only can do it in a pi 4b, and not in pi 3/2/1/0 where you need to exit from desktop to start emulationstation first. Can i share a youtube video showing it?.
Or you can try yourself and see it. I said Raspberry Pi OS and not Raspberry Pi OS Lite (that havent desktop environment).

4RetroPieTFT

@dankcushions

and here the comlete steps only the 3 first videos
And im sorry by my english, sorry if was rude.

fretman

@4retropietft , thanks for the explanation and video. I received my parts build today and will look at getting things together this weekend. I'll look into the OS options as well. But for now, I think in the long run, I'm going to keep it simple and eventually just have Retropie running.

dankcushions

@4retropietft said in Raspbian VS Retropie?:

@dankcushions and what i do it every day in my pi os Sir ? I read a lot of answer saying that!, but i cant understood why answer that! If only have to install pi os compile retropie with the official instructions, and look to not answer that the wrong way! With respect, but from pi 4b, we can compile retropie in pi os and just open it launching emulationstation from the desktop enviroment, that post is very old. For that i clarify that only can do it in a pi 4b, and not in pi 3/2/1/0 where you need to exit from desktop to start emulationstation first. Can i share a youtube video showing it?.
Or you can try yourself and see it. I said Raspberry Pi OS and not Raspberry Pi OS Lite (that havent desktop environment).

i mean just what i said - just because something is possible doesn't mean it is supported. there are lots issues caused by launching within the desktop:
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/25197/bluetooth-and-roms-go-to-desktop-then-back-to-retropie
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/28081/none-of-my-games-are-launching-on-a-fresh-updated-install
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/29231/configuration-menus-will-not-load
etc...
it's not tested so we don't supported it, so if you have issues with such a configuration you will not be able to seek assistance here unless you install in the instructed way.

4RetroPieTFT

@dankcushions i dont use bluetooth so never have that problem, the other one never happen im affortunate since i have the pi 4 never an issue. I understood the support but the answer need to be you can but is not recommended and only for pi4b model. The instructions i followed are that in docs, but never make the change in the memory, because i use like a pc the pi os. But all the steps are what are in the docs:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
reboot
sudo update-locale LANGUAGE="en_GB.UTF-8" LC_ALL="en_GB.UTF-8"
reboot
sudo apt install git lsb-release -y  -》 This step isnt neccesary in Buster an Pi OS

git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup.git

cd RetroPie-Setup

sudo ./retropie_setup.sh

**OK** then choose **Basic Install,** **OK**, Yes

And update the retropie script every week.