Difference between Retropie and Lakka

clishi89

Hi all,

I was wondering is there a difference between the two in terms of usability and different options? I have a Pi 4 and I installed the stable Lakka edition. Is there anything that Retropie normally can do that Lakka can't?

Thanks

hhromic

I would say the difference is the same as buying a DVD player vs owning a computer to play DVDs.

Lakka is an embedded operating system with just RetroArch meant to just use RetroArch. RetroPie is a full operating system (Raspbian) that comes pre-configured with RetroArch and many other "retro-related" software and also supplementary software aimed for entertainment (including watching movies).

Of course, like my original comparison, Lakka being more specific-purpose means it is easier to setup and use, however more limited as well.

dankcushions

@clishi89 they're quite different. different launcher (emulationstation vs retroarch XMB), different emulators (lakka ONLY has libretro emulators, whereas retropie picks best-of-breed out of libretro and standalone emulators).

i also presume retropie is also less locked down in the underlying operating system so you can run non-emulation software, or do more advanced tweaking. lakka runs on libreelec which is a lightweight OS designed for specific usage. retropie runs on raspbian which is customized debian, so you can do pretty much anything you could feasibly do with the hardware.

ultimately a lot of it is personal preference, but you can presume that most people here prefer retropie :)

clishi89

My question was related to emulation options. And the question was answered - Retropie has more emulators and other retro-related software. I also like the Emulationstation interface, so I will probably use Retropie, when it is ready.

Thanks for the replies.

barbudreadmon

@clishi89 with lakka being a fully optimized lightweight OS for the board, i would also expect it's slightly faster than retropie.

@dankcushions said in Difference between Retropie and Lakka:

lakka ONLY has libretro emulators

It would be a bit tricky to integrate this in lakka, but iirc you can somehow launch external software from RA by writing a core that simply execute an external command (it won't benefit from RA features though), i remember seeing this for dolphin a few years ago (before a libretro port was written).

Not sure about the list of standalone emulators worth playing over libretro cores on a pi4, but the playlist system in RA/lakka is a big no-no for me.

gorgar19

I would say for your purposes the difference would be purely aesthetics they're both going to serve the same purpose running. But for my personal taste retropie is aesthetically more pleasing what that using the emulationstation front end.

there's a lot of people here that could give you a lot better explanation as to the differences and people have already given you good explanations what the differences that's my personal take is the retropie is aesthetically more pleasing has a cleaner look for me anyway.
But lakka has a stable release already for the raspberry pi 4 so that might be a plus for you

ohmycommodore

Time to check it out since RetroPie is still in the oven. I'm sure I'll learn or appreciate something I didn't before.

update: Lakka's "light theme" seemed to be WHITE TEXT ON WHITE BACKGROUND. hardest. game. ever.

Clyde

@ohmycommodore said in Difference between Retropie and Lakka:

Lakka's "light theme" seemed to be WHITE TEXT ON WHITE BACKGROUND. hardest. game. ever.

In Germany, there's the tradition of East Frisian jokes. One is about the national flag of East Frisia allegedly being a white eagle on white background. 😉

raspberry79

@hhromic
I have noobs on My Pi 4 with libreelect on it and i also starting to find Lakka alot easier then Retropie.
Just don't know how to set the roms up on the USB drive for Lakka other then retropie.
Retropie done gave me the red a.... because i keep getting a error when setting it up.