Advice if stand-alone installation or on top of RASPBIAN

hawk66

Hello,

I'm new to Raspberry Pi and new to RetroPie. I have bought a Pi 3 B and want mainly use it for RetroPie but also to watch a couple of Amazon Videos with the Media Center(Kodi). And perhaps for other occasional tasks...

When I start with RetroPie, do I have then a Raspbian underneath and could further install other stuff (e.g. access to terminal, GUI) or would you advise me to install Rasbian first ? I'm quite familar with Linux (Ubuntu).

Thanks!

BuZz

the Retropie image is Raspbian Lite with retropie installed on top.

hawk66

All right, so if I would install RetroPie on top of Raspbian, I'd get the full Raspbian image + RetroPie - that is, the only difference is light vs full and there is no further 'magic', only available by using the RetroPie image directly ?

BuZz

only that on the image we do some configuration for you, most available from retropie-setup

basically

enable usromservice
set to autostart ES
enable splashscreen
enable samba shares
enable uinput module
install bash welcome tweak
quieten boot (not available via the script - manual edit to /boot/cmdline.txt needed)

and on a full raspbian you have all the desktop stuff installed by default. can install it on top of raspbian lite also.

RetroResolution

Hi, I have an alternative method for setting up a Pi to run Raspbian Desktop, RetroPie (and Kodi) - I've written a couple of guides if you're interested:

Multipurpose Raspberry Pi: Installing a Media, Gaming, PC Replacement

Multipurpose Raspberry Pi – Part 2: Adding a Menu to Access RetroPie, Kodi, and the Raspbian Desktop

hawk66

@RetroResolution oh that looks really neat. Thanks a lot :)

RetroResolution

@hawk66 you're welcome, hope it helps you

Meneer Jansen

I use NOOBS to create a dual boot SD card for OpenElec (i.e. Kodi media Center) and Raspbian. In Raspbian I installed RetroPie via the script (link). You have to manually get Raspbian to NOT startup without a graphical user interface (i.e. not start LXDE automatically).

P.S. My "Help files" for personal use (copy and paste into a text doc):

o==========o
| Contents |
o==========o

A. Install

B. Partitions

C. PAL Television

D. Tips

X. References
-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-

o============o
| A. Install |
o============o

Format SD card (as fat32)
(www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installation/noobs.md)
Extract Noobs zip file w/ 7Zip (!).
7z x ./NOOBS_v1_7_0.zip -onoobsextracted
Drop Noobs files on sd card an boot.
Usernames/Passwords: Raspbian = pi/raspberry; OpenElec: root/openelec.

o===============o
| B. Partitions |
o===============o
Noobs installs wo operating systems that do NOT share their boot partitions, contrary to Berryboot. That means that RetroPie can start up w/ a Pi firmware version with which it will work (the Pi's firmware is on the boot partition).

Say your Noobs SD card is /dev/sdx, then these are the partitions:

Part. | Distro | Size | Partition name/Remarks
||________|_______________________________________
sdx1 | NOOBS | 3,4 GB | Recovery. Holds the images of the orig.
| | | install CD's. FAT16 partition.
| | |
sdx2 | | | Extended partition containing sdx5 to 9.
| | |
sdx3 | | | Left blank to define as primary partition.
| | |
sdx4 | | | Left blank to define as primary partition.
| | |
sdx5 | NOOBS | 30 MB | Settings
| | |
sdx6 | Raspbian | 63 MB | boot (RetroPie)
| | |
sdx7 | Raspbian | 9,6 GB | root (RetroPie)
| | |
sdx8 | OpenElec | 160 MB | boot
| | |
sdx9 | OpenElec | 1,6 GB | userspace
||________|_______________________________________

o===================o
| C. PAL Television |
o===================o
[http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/13803/how-to-override-config-txt-settings-during-boot]

Display Mode Selection: By default, NOOBS will output over HDMI at your display's preferred resolution, even if no HDMI display is connected. If you do not see any output on your HDMI display or are using the composite output, press one of the following keys on your keyboard:

1 to select HDMI preferred mode
2 to select HDMI safe mode
3 to select Composite PAL mode
4 to select Composite NTSC mode

o==========o
| D. Tips |
o==========o

Wanna edit the "Settings" partition of Noobs? Start OpeneElec, SSH to it (in Nemo) and edit the settings files. Because when the Pi's SD is inserted to a PC this partition is mounted read ony. The partitions are in the 'Media' dir.
Start up Noobs not in overscan mode ...?

o=======================o
| 1. RETROPIE Installation |
o=======================o

From image

Unpack the the gz image w/ '7z x retropie.img.gz' because only 7Zip can handle the larger zip files.

2. Noobs/Raspbian

See separate text file on restoring a backup.
Install Raspbian w/ Noobs.
Make sure the GUI (LXDE?) is not installed/autostarted. Go to a TTY (CTRL + ALT + F1) and run:

sudo raspi-config
Retropie must be installed w/ the script from the Retropie website
See: [http://blog.petrockblock.com/2012/07/22/retropie-setup-an-initialization-script-for-retroarch-on-the-raspberry-pi].

Tip: use SSH for the following commands:

 sudo apt-get update
 sudo apt-get install -y git dialog
 cd
 git clone git://github.com/petrockblog/RetroPie-Setup.git
 cd RetroPie-Setup
 chmod +x retropie_setup.sh
 sudo ./retropie_setup.sh

o===================o
| 2. Set resolution |
o===================o

Edit /boot/config.txt.
Set 'hdmi_group' to '1' (0 will use the preferred group reported by the edid).
[http://elinux.org/RPiconfig#Video] Set 'hdmi_mode' to '1' for VGA or '3' for 480 scanlines progressive scan at 60 Hz (this makes the console better readable).