@mitu you, my friend, are a genius (and this is really a stupid bug)
Yes, the hostname was Inwin as that particular system lives in an Inwin mini-ITX case. Changing the hostname of the system fixed it!

@mitu Thanks - I thought it would be something easy, and it was that. All works now!

(Just in case anyone else sees this - the .desktop file is in /usr/local/share/applications )

Thanks, that seems to get rid of that console error. Now the games just hang, will do some more troubleshooting :D

@mitu Thanks for the reply,

Unfortunately this is not the information I was wanting. This information is good IF your using packages within Retropie but not external emulators away from Retropie. It doesn't explain why it would load an emulator but not dump the rom on load up.

sorry I am new to the fine detail on simple codes. Thanks for the help

@mitu If retroarch is looking for and the bios, which folder? As if there is a folder it is searching at all it could be worth to drop it into that folder. I reinstalled and nothing.

@buzz Hi, Im having this same issue but with Linux Mint Debian Edition 4 (debbie). Could you add the work around for that as well please, cheers.

~$ lsb_release -sidrc
Linuxmint
LMDE 4 (debbie)
4
debbie

@phoenixjedi For a PC, with enough CPU, it won't affect the performance. You're free to use both options and see the difference, if any. Note that RetroArch defaults to not activate this option by default on Pc builld.

@mitu I updated the compiler and it worked great! thank you!