Booting to Emulationstation and closing it to get straight to desktop (no terminal)

A Former User

Hi! I got my Retropie finally working like I wanted except for one thing.

I've set it boot straight to Emulationstation, it does that. But when I close Emulationstation (with F4) I get terminal, not Desktop Environment. Is there anyway to set it like it boots straight to Emulationstation but it would also start DE background so closing Emulationstation would get me straight to desktop without the need to enter "startx" in terminal?

dankcushions

@isilent1337 no - whilst the desktop/X is running is not supported. however, via this you can access it via the 'ports' menu from within emulationstation, which is perhaps more convenient.

A Former User

@dankcushions I installed Retropie on top of Raspbian, does that make any difference or do I need to to install PIXEL still to get this working? Otherwise it seems like a good solution.

dankcushions

@isilent1337 to add it to the menu you would need to install it via the above method (i suppose it would not have much to install other than the menu link, if it's already available). however i have no experience of this so hopefully someone else does...

mitu

@isilent1337 It doesn't matter if you installed on-top of Raspbian (Raspberry Pi OS now) or from the RetroPie image. The RetroPie image is a pre-installed and pre-configured Raspberry Pi OS Lite installation.

A Former User

@dankcushions Thank you for quick help, really appreciate it. I will make a backup image of my recent system and will try to do that installation.

A Former User

@mitu OK! Good to hear. Thanks !

A Former User

Hey! I started thinking about this and I came up with an idea. Would it be possible to set Emulationstation a delayed start? Like Pi would boot to desktop first and start emulationstation from desktop right after it loads? Because I can start emulationstation from desktop terminal and when I close it, I go back to desktop.

dankcushions

@isilent1337 again, running retropie whilst the desktop is running/loaded is not supported.

A Former User

I really have to ask once more. I am now at my Raspberry Pi OS desktop, I open terminal and type "emulationstation" and it loads RetroPie. Now if I close it, I get back to desktop (without terminal first). This mentioned process is what I would want to set up as automatic. Really no chance?

YFZdude

@isilent1337
"not supported" means you are doing things your own way instead of taking their advice and running this the way it was designed and tested. You can certainly do this, but will get less help unless someone else has already done something similar and is willing to help when it doesn't work properly.

For what it's worth, if you want to launch ES from the desktop with a shortcut, or as part of an auto start process, check out this thread with my experience on a desktop build.
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/post/261695

As for the delay, you can probably google how to do a delay in a script and add it to the startup process.

A Former User

@yfzdude Yes, I actually made it launch already but now it's looping every time I close RetroPie. Still need to config some more.

sleve_mcdichael

Can you do this with autostart.sh?

/opt/retropie/configs/all/autostart.sh:

emulationstation #auto

As a quick test I added an "echo" command so the file now reads:

emulationstation #auto
echo Are you there?

Then I pressed ctrl-D to start EmulationStation and quit with F4. The terminal asked "Are you there?" before displaying the retropie_welcome message and command prompt.

Note: this worked when using any of ctrl-D, exit, or logout to end the current bash login and call the autostart script. It did not work when just running the emulationstation command by itself.

So I think if, instead of an "echo" command, you used the startx (start the desktop) command, it might do what you want? Boots to EmulationStation on login and then, when ES quits, go to the desktop.

/opt/retropie/configs/all/autostart.sh:

emulationstation #auto
startx