RetroArch is a front-end for emulators, game engines, and media players (collectively called cores). It enables you to run classic games on a wide range of computers and keep common configuration settings in one place.
Installation
The retroarch pachage provides the front-end that is responsible for UI, settings, managing the game library, and cores.
The cores themselves are provided through additional libretro-* packages that have to be installed separately. You can run apt list '~n^libretro' to see all packages that provide cores.
Additional Cores
There are many more RetroArch cores than are available through Debian packages. You can download an install those from inside RetroArch.
Since Debian package management handles the software updates, auto-update of the various components from within RetroArch has been disabled. Downloading new cores within RetroArch is also not working out of the box, because RetroArch is configured to store cores in a system-wide directory (/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libretro). See the patches applied, in particular to the RetroArch config file.
If you want to use additional cores, follow the instructions bellow.
First you have to configure a different directory to store cores, such that your user can write to it. Add these settings to ~/.config/retroarch/retroarch.conf:
libretro_directory = "~/.config/retroarch/libretro/" libretro_info_path = "~/.config/retroarch/libretro-info/" menu_show_core_updater = "true"
Now update the list of the available cores by going to Online Updater -> Update Core Info Files inside RetroArch.
After that you will be able to download cores by going to Online Updater -> Core Downloader. Note that not all of these cores are distributed under a DFSG compliant software license.
Links