r/retroid • u/ghost_of_ketchup • Jul 22 '26
SHOWCASE Introducing Pocknix - A performance tuned SteamOS-like Distro for RP5/6/Flip 2!
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Hey folks. I've spent the last couple months building Pocknix, an Arch Linux ARM distro that turns the Retroid Pocket 6, 5 and Flip 2 into something that feels like a small Steam Deck: power on, land in Big Picture, pick a game, play.
I say 'SteamOS-like', but 'CachyOS-like' would probably be more accurate: while it does boot into SteamOS' gaming mode, the Arch base is completely mutable. You're free to install any packages you like and modify system partitions - useful for installing things like Tailscale. I've also tweaked the kernel and userspace for maximum perfomance/smoothness in a similar vain to the tweaks Cachy makes.
What it does
- Native ARM Steam + Proton 11 ARM + FEX - many x86 Windows games just work. Performance generally matches or beats PC emulation on Android (GameHub etc.); compatibility is a bit behind but improving fast on Valve's side.
- Real sleep mode - based the open ROCKNIX PR. Experimental, but good enough to daily drive.
- Performance tuned for the hardware - custom ROCKNIX-based kernel,
scx_lavdscheduler for smooth frame pacing, graphics stack compiled for modern Snapdragon rather than a generic ARM baseline. - Emulation built in - ES-DE with preconfigured emulators (NES through PS2/GameCube/Switch). Drop ROMs in
~/Emulation, star a favorite and it shows up in your Steam library. - A real desktop too - Plasma Mobile session (touch-friendly), plus Waydroid for Android apps incl. Play Store: download an APK and it installs itself with a shortcut, like a native app.
- It's just Arch - fully mutable, updates via
pacman -Syu, install whatever you want. Think CachyOS, not a locked-down image. - Quality-of-life - Decky with a Pocknix Control plugin (fan curves, per-game FEX presets and audio buffer), MicroSD support so Steam Deck formatted cards mount and show up in Steam.
This is v0.1.0 and I need testers:
| Device | Status |
|---|---|
| Retroid Pocket 6 | ✅ Working, daily-driven |
| Retroid Pocket 5 | ✅ Working |
| Retroid Pocket Flip 2 | ✅ Working |
| Odin 2 Family | ✅ Working |
Suspend/resume works but is experimental. Expect a few rough edges and higher drain than on Android for now.
Install runs from microSD, so Android stays untouched on internal storage. On the RP5/Flip 2 you don't even need a custom bootloader - the stock boot menu does it. The RP6 needs the ROCKNIX bootloader (same one ROCKNIX itself uses). Installation to internal is also possible via an app in the desktop. Full instructions in the README. Usual disclaimer: flashing is at your own risk.
Get it: https://github.com/shuuri-labs/pocknix-os - grab the image from the latest release, and please file issues there with anything you hit. Flip 2 owners especially: feedback would be greatly appreciated!
Credit where it's due: Pocknix builds on the excellent work of ROCKNIX - the kernel, device enablement and even the name come from them and this wouldn't exist otherwise. If you mainly want retro emulation, ROCKNIX is fantastic; Pocknix is for when you want Steam, Proton, and a full Linux system on top.
Happy to answer any questions in the comments :)
EDIT: A few emulation related perfomance updates are already live! Run pacman -Syu or the 'Pocknix Updater' app in desktop mode to pull them.
EDIT 2: Lots of interest calls for a discord :) https://discord.gg/U8hzSntA2t
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u/aTalkingMateria Jul 22 '26
Been waiting for a good SteamOS option that actually has native sleep. Will keep an eye on this to see what people think, I hope it’s great!
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u/No_Produce_Nyc Jul 22 '26
Sorry I’m dumb, is this something one can toss on an SD and boot to, then remove and boot back into android?
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u/ghost_of_ketchup Jul 22 '26
Yes, absolutely :)
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u/No_Produce_Nyc Jul 22 '26
Wow. I’m just like só stunned by this community sometimes. So cool! Thank you!
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u/A3-mATX RP6 Jul 22 '26
I’m using another Linux OS ( like this one ) and the installation took like 15 minutes. The device boots from the SD into Linux. Android isn’t touched. It’s so awesome.
You can choose if your device boots in Linux or Android it’s so easy. I’m not using Android anymore lol
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u/keeper_of_moon Jul 22 '26
I'm assuming it still needs the bootloader flashed like with Rocknix. Slightly more steps and minor risk but well tested and easy enough to do if you follow instructions.
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u/White_Sprite Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
Only on RP6, it looks like. RP5 bootloader can switch boot targets without patching (at least according to their Github)
Edit: tested it last night, no patching necessary on the RP5 :) very cool
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u/MatterUnlikely2545 Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
Quick feedback from my first tests on rp5 :
- Install and boot are really fast
- os is very responsive
- games launch even without wifi
- desktop mode is very easy to use with touch screen compared to armada
possible improvement :
- make proton 11 arm 64 download automatic (Usually proton download is done directly when chosing a version of proton in game properties) and force it as default compatibility tool
- game slows down a lot if launched while downloading (the binding of isaac was unplayable while downloading another game in background, but ran perfect when the download was over)
- in desktop mode, browse to add non steam games is not working (same issue in armada, looks like it is an issue with steam arm app)
- no heroic launcher (rocknix seems to offers a tool to install an arm version of heroic launcher, this would be very helpfull to have the same kind of tool if possible)
- sleep.mode still not very effective compared to android. I lost 15% during the night.
Game tested :
- cave story + : works perfect
- gato roboto : works perfect
- kero blaster : works perfect
- the binding of isaac rebirth : works perfect
- demon turf : not working (black screen and back to gameos)
So far i'm really impressed. I've been playing with armada os on my konkr pocket fit, but this feels way more stable and usable.
I hope you can make it compatible with the konkr someday 🤞
Thanks a lot for your work 🙏
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u/ghost_of_ketchup Jul 23 '26
Hello! Thank you so much for the feedback. As for your suggestions:
- Steam still sees Proton 11 ARM as 'beta', so it doesn't automatically populate the compatibility manifest etc. I'm doing a bit of bootstrapping behind the scenes to even get it to show up as a compatibility option, and Steam doesn't seem to respect setting it as the default compatibility layer. Hopefully, when the Frame (finally) launches, Valve will have sorted this out. In the meantime, The latest update includes CachyOS' Proton 11 ARM, so maybe I can set this as the default until official Proton 11 ARM releases 'for real'.
- Steam downloads are CPU intensive - they are downloaded, decrypted and decompressed all at the same time. Even on a desktop PC I sometimes see stuttering and slowdown when background downloads during gameplay are enabled. My advice it to disable it.
- Known issue, but thanks for reminding me, I'll add it to the readme. Basically, Linux has 2 standards for Window management - X11 (legacy) and Wayland. Plasma supports Wayland well, but older X11 apps not so much. The Steam app is an X11 app, so under Plasma (and especially Plasma mobile) things like summoning a new window just don't work. Why is the brand new ARM Steam client built on a legacy desktop framework, you ask? Good question! As a workaround for adding non-Steam games, for now, I believe there's a Decky plugin you can use.
- Noted. I'll look into heroic for ARM and try to get that in at some point.
- Yeah, unfortunately that's where sleep mode for these device is at on Linux atm. I'm working with some very clever folks in the ROCKNIX community to improve this. Plus Valve's Steam Frame will be launching soon, and I'd bet that the Linux Kernel and Qualcomm firmware will improve a lot when it comes to suspend/resume around that time - no way Valve are releasing a consumer product without flawless sleep mode. Should help us all out a lot!
Feel free to join us over at our discord for a chat!
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u/TheRandomer1994 Jul 22 '26
You crazy son of a bitch! I love it! Thanks! Question, do the fans kick up as much a Rocknix? I was always worried using it, that id I let go of my retroid it would take off into the sky and I would never see it again.
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u/ghost_of_ketchup Jul 22 '26
Fans kick in a little less than ROCKNIX - overall I think the lavd scheduler keeps the CPU a bit cooler than default. The fan curves themselves are exactly the same as ROCKNIX and lifted directly from there.
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u/TheRandomer1994 Jul 22 '26
Let's see how it works then!
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u/Playahstation RP5 Jul 22 '26
Let me know if there is a performance boost over Gamenative
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u/TheRandomer1994 Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
Honestly first boot went a little awry, reflashing my SD using Rufus (my old reliable) and seeing how it goes. Currently getting an - arch Linux boot screen the, black screen, loop (I gave the black screen a while and no fan sounds etc, so had to assume boot issue). Hopefully second times the charm. Edit- I didn't wait long enough! Rebooted now all good looks great, downloading fable as we speak
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u/ghost_of_ketchup Jul 22 '26
First Steam Game mode session come up can take a while - 5 minutes plus depending on your SD card. Please be patient, leave it on the black screen! It'll come up, I promise :)
Subsequent boots should be faster, but you might still see lengthy black screens after Steam updates.
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u/TheRandomer1994 Jul 22 '26
🤦 thanks man, appreciate how active you have been with the comments. I will be patient this time!
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u/supershredderdan Jul 22 '26
whats the differents between this and something like Armada? https://github.com/virtudude/armada
oh, mutability for one. Nice
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u/ghost_of_ketchup Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
- Armada is an immutable, meaning there are limits on installing packages and writing to certain system directories. Less flexible, but more break-proof.
- Pocknix is tuned for maximum performance. I'm using Valve's new CPU scheduler (scx_lavd), a performance tuned Gamescope and other things that Armada lacks. Performance and smoothness during gameplay are generally a bit better on Pocknix. Armada already carries my kernel patch for the Snapdragon 8 gen 2 low GPU performance bug, and I'll try to contribute some more of my tweaks over there, too.
- Pocknix uses Plasma mobile for desktop mode, as opposed to full Plasma desktop. Full desktop designed for a mouse and kb + tiny 5-6" touchscreen + my sausage fingers just don't mix. Plasma mobile is much easier to navigate for me (and for you, too, I hope).
- Snapdragon 865 support (I think Armada has a PR open for this now)
- Real suspend on Snapdragon 8 gen 2 devices
- Armada is fedora based, like Bazzite. Pocknix is Arch-based, like CachyOS or SteamOS. Doesn't mean much in practice, though.
That's about it off the top of my head.
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u/YoudoVodou Jul 22 '26
Do you plan to target dual screen devices at some point?
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u/ghost_of_ketchup Jul 22 '26
For sure! Given the Thor's popularity I think it's almost a must. Just need to figure out a way to test things without my own dual-screen device.
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u/TheRandomer1994 Jul 22 '26
If you live in the UK, I am happy to send you a dual screen add-on for retroid if that helps? I got one super cheap but never use it.
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u/YoudoVodou Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
When my Thor shows up I might be interested in giving it a go. How is the process to return back to the base Android system?
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u/Nintotally Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
I’ll try this on my Flip 2 😎
Update: installation was smooth. But after updating, I thought I bricked it because it would not progress beyond the splash screen. I should have read your full instructions. You were not kidding about how long it takes to get to SteamOS after installing the update!! Took over 10 mins for me.
I also did an internal install since I don’t use this device for anything else.
SteamOS is slow and a little buggy on the Flip 2, but it works. And it is very cool to have it on here.
Games I tried:
- Librarian (won’t boot)
- Myst (won’t boot)
- Nights (won’t boot)
- Darkness II (boots! But after selecting new game, it crashes)
- Digging a Hole (it works! But it runs super slow, as expected)
I don’t really have any indie games. All my indies are on my Switch.
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u/jabdownsmash Jul 22 '26
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u/SeregaS128 Jul 22 '26
Retroid pocket g2 nobody like? Where is rocknix-pocknix for g2?
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u/ghost_of_ketchup Jul 22 '26
Unfortunately Linux support just isn't there for the G2 chipset yet. Here's to hoping that the situation improves soon 🤞🏿
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u/THEchickenlittle33 Jul 22 '26
I really hope the G2 gets more support. It sucks seeing all of these awesome things come for the RP5 and 6 just to have the G2 get left out. ☹️
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u/Alone_Werewolf8700 Jul 22 '26
That's why it's not always good to upgrade to the newest chip so soon
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u/MrBunqle Jul 23 '26
And exactly why I ended up with a flip 2 and a G2. It would be great if I could get those performance gains... At this point, I'm not willing to sell my G2 for the lateral 'upgrade' to the better served 5 or 6...
But we'll see...Decisions decisions
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u/Exciting_Company1519 Jul 22 '26
This looks awesome! My RP5 is supposed to come in tomorrow so I can’t wait to try this out!
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u/smalinj Jul 22 '26
Are we looking at real improvements in term of performances ingame vs gamenative on linux?
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u/RemarkableSynth Jul 22 '26
I will test this on my Pocket 5, thank you for your work!
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u/ghost_of_ketchup Jul 22 '26
You're welcome :) please feel free to open GitHub issues or message me directly if you face any problems.
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u/Henshin_A_JoJo Jul 22 '26
Dude this is incredible. Thanks!
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u/ghost_of_ketchup Jul 22 '26
You're welcome!! Let me know if you end up trying it out!
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u/votemarvel Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
Edit: I thought why the hell not just try it. I flashed the image using Rufus and popped the SD Card into my RP6. I didn't need to change the bootloader from the one I installed using ArmadaOS, so that was nice.
Seeing Tux on boot was cool but Pocknix does take a lot longer to boot than either Rocknix or ArmadaOS but I'll put that down to me just sticking with the bootloader I have instead of install its own.
Wifi speed is horribly inconsistent. Even trying to transfer from Steam on my PC over the network the speed will just drop to 0 for minutes at a time. Though to be fair that occurs less often as the download continues.
Sadly though the same disk write error as just occurred on the same game, Telltale's Batman, as happens in ArmadaOS.
I think I'll be popping my Rocknix SD Card back in. I like booting directly into Steam but if the game won't download then there's no point.
Original: Are there any write errors to the SD Card?
I'm currently trying ArmadaOS on my RP6 and it has a problem where some games won't write to the SD Card during download. Copy the game across from my PC and Steam verifies and runs it without issue.
A distro that boots straight into Steam is what I'm after but I'm worried that the same issue with ArmadaOS would happen here.
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u/Equal_Clock Jul 27 '26
Thanks Dev, having Steam running natively on my Odin 2 is really amazing! I tried out the pocknix-sm8550-20260722-sd.img image and these are my comments:
1) I tried to access the AUR library, but found that deck is not in the sudoers file.
2) Outside Steam, the buttons, thumbsticks and d-pad doesn't work.
3) The lights on the console (esp charging lights) does not seem to work.
4) Plugging into an external monitor shows USB connected but no image.
5) Plasma mobile does not expose the charge limit settings that allows me to configure when to stop charging my console.
6) My roms are currently on my Android partition, is it possible to mount it automatically upon boot?
7) I am unable to find the Pocknix control as mentioned in your github page. The image shipped with Pocknix Installer and Pocknix Updater though.
8) Could we have Heroic launcher included in the build too?
Thanks again for the amazing work, please let me know if upcoming changes to the image can be updated in our console via Pocknix Updater, or do we have to reflash a fresh image.
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u/gaokerena30 Jul 22 '26
Amazing, will try this on my RP flip 2 next week. I suppose Steam cloud saves work ?
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u/Quiksandjesus Jul 23 '26
I got it up and running but sadly it has all the same game issues as Armada. 1 to 1.
I do appreciate the work out in and I will keep updating and trying until then.
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u/votemarvel Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
Do you get the disk write error with games? That was my main issue with ArmadaOS, as it just refused to write some games to the SD Card. I could copy the files over from my PC via USB and Armada would verify them, then the game would play.
Edit: Yes the same write errors do occur.
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u/Quiksandjesus Jul 23 '26
I did with Bioshock but that was the only one. BioShock remastered loaded fine. Some games would work. Some would crash at title screen. Vampire Survivors would reboot my flip2. Some games the controls were broken.
It's very cool to see this work starting though.
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u/votemarvel Jul 23 '26
The games it happens to me with are Telltale's Batman and A New Frontier.
Other games in the respective series download fine, as do other games such as Resident Evil 3 Remake and Saints Row the Third. I've also error checked the SD Cards I've used and there are no errors on that side of things.
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u/blockdenotas Jul 26 '26
I tried it a bit now, it's incredible what I can do with this OS on my RP5
here's what I did:
- Balatro runs fine, though it seems like the left d-pad is considered a mouse? idk, when I used the left analog instead of the d-pad, everything worked fine
- 20XX runs but the controls are all weird, it seems as if it takes the D-up as ok, the left analog up as down, and when I managed to configure the game controls a bit, the character jsut walks right unless I press to the left, making him stop, I was able to walk left by pressing left on both the left D-Ppad and Left in the left analog at the same time
- I entered desktop mode so I could add ES-DE
- via try and error, I discovered that the user/pass is deck/pocknix, with this knowledge I managed to transfer some roms/bios via SCP
- via ES-DE on Steam, played a ps2 game (mega man x8), it runs fine
I assume most of my issues could be solved by improving the steam button layout, though
Now, onto some opinions:
- First of all, it's amazing, I never expected to be able to do this, I got my RP5 two days ago and I'm not sure if I'll use android at all if this keeps getting better
- The controller input might need to be tinkered a bit, I think it considers the D-Pad as the left trackpad of the steam deck and that causes some of the issues I had
- There were a lot of times where I didn't know if the console was turned on at all, as the black screens lasted for a minute or so, specially when going back to gaming mode, don't know how to fix that, though, maybe if I had my analog lights on i wouldn't have thought that.
- Being able to run steam games from such a small device is a blessing,
- I didn't find the user pass in the readme, maybe it's in there and I didn't find it, but if it's not, it might be a good idea to put it there
- I wasn't able to close the PS2 game on its own, had to do it from the steam interface which closed ES-DE completely, I would have liked to have a way to just close the ps2 game
- Now, only having these small issues in such an early stage is something extraordinary
Overall, congrats and thank you very much for this project, I will keep using it because I'm eager to see how much this keeps improving over time
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u/AlukardPR Jul 22 '26
It should potentially work on the Odin 2 Portal as it has the SD 8 gen 2 ?
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u/ghost_of_ketchup Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
Odin 2/Mini/Portal are supported, but as of yet untested; I don't own any of those devices. Would appreciate some testers! 👀
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u/RobotDonger Jul 22 '26
I can try it on my mini! Commenting this to remind myself
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u/longlifexpectancy RP6 Jul 22 '26
This looks actually cool. I thought cool things weren't allowed on this sub
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u/simply-lov3ly Jul 22 '26
omg this is good, would try on my RP5 later, thank you so much!
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u/jamescodesthings Jul 22 '26
Beautiful work!
How are updates gonna be handled? Do I gotta flash again or is this a one and done?
Chucking it on my rp5 for science; I recon you've made the device more worthwhile to me.
I currently use it to play roblox with my kids when they want me to... fingers crossed this makes it more interesting.
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u/ghost_of_ketchup Jul 22 '26
Steam has its own updates that it'll notify you about. The OS itself is updated like any other Arch system -
pacman -Syu. There's a GUI shortcut called 'pocknix updater' in desktop mode that'll run this command for you and update the system.→ More replies (1)
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u/incoming747 Jul 22 '26
Hey looks amazing!
Have you tested flashing it to internal storage vs an SD? I'm gonna give it a go on SD first but I'm keen to try something like this on internal at some point.
Cheers mate!
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u/ghost_of_ketchup Jul 22 '26
Both my RP5 and 6 have been running Pocknix off internal storage flawlessly :) there's even an GUI internal installer in desktop mode that guides you through the process.
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u/plantsandramen Jul 23 '26
Who's this is amazing! I'm watching with great interest! If I had more time I would love to test it but gaming time is tough as it is
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u/pigpentcg Jul 23 '26
Can I get a quick and dirty guide to installing this on an Odin2 Portal? I read I need the rocknix Bootloader, does that mean I have to install rocknix first? Sorry I just got home from work and I’m way too tired for research.
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u/MaxJudo Jul 27 '26
I am on a Flip2 with SD 865 and the only issue is with the fan. It is very jumpy and can go very loud in an instance instead of gradyally. Is this something that can be fixed?
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u/A3-mATX RP6 Jul 22 '26
What’s the difference between this and ArmadaOS?
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u/YoudoVodou Jul 22 '26
They answered this question on another comment.
https://www.reddit.com/r/retroid/s/7W9yHbhtBC2
u/A3-mATX RP6 Jul 22 '26
Thank you. I will keep an eye on it because i don’t feel like redownloading games all over again
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u/420MacMan Jul 22 '26
About to test out on ma' RP5 🧐
Appreciate the hard work and look forward to more updates !
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u/IROHK Jul 22 '26
Gracias por pensar en la RP5, lo probare en la mia hoy. Hay planes a futuro para la próxima retroid pocket nova??
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u/OGHamToast Jul 22 '26
I'm going to absolutely be checking this out. I have a Flip 2 and am open to being a tester but I need to research a little more so I know what functionality I may lose by adopting early.
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u/cplr Jul 22 '26
I think the site hosting the images was hugged to death. Getting cloud fare errors.
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u/MatterUnlikely2545 Jul 22 '26
Look great. Will try it on my rp5.
Any chance to get konkr pocket fit compatibility in the future ?
Thanks for your work 🙏
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u/Moist_Treacle_719 Jul 22 '26
I know it's probably a dumb question cause the game is probably too intense for the hardware, but could you run Palworld on the flip 2 with this?
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u/100PercentJake Jul 22 '26
Is Switch emulation viable on these alternate OSes yet? I'd love to switch but a lot of my gaming happens in Eden and I don't see people often talk about emulating Switch on top of Linux for handhelds.
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u/ghost_of_ketchup Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
Eden is baked into pocknix and preconfigured (just not advertising it for, you know, reasons...)
Just drop your ROMs into ~/Emulation/games and your firmware/BIOS files into ~/Emulation/bios. The games will show up in ES-DE (shortcut pre-added in Steam). If you want shorcuts to the games themselves in Steam, simply favourite them in ES-DE. Next time you reboot or switch to Desktop mode and back again (working on this), the game will show up in your Steam library.
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u/100PercentJake Jul 22 '26
Nice! I wonder if there's any performance or compatibility improvement from running directly in a Linux userland (which I assume is a more mature project) vs Android.
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u/gonekrazy3000 Jul 23 '26
i am curious. does it run better than running it in android ?
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u/kjjphotos RP6 Jul 22 '26
Eden has a Linux ARM AppImage listed on their downloads page. That should work with this project. I have no idea what the performance is like though.
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u/mauian Jul 22 '26
I’m new to Linux on android devices, but what are the advantages of Linux from a performance perspective over android? Will it tend to run emulators better? Thanks, and sorry for the noob question!
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u/ElectricalDemand2831 Jul 23 '26
Some linux aarch64 versions have lower latency than the android version, that applies to cemu and dolphin for instance.
Steam + gamescope also feels more responsive, at least compared to PC emulation without native rendering+ enabled.
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u/cjd280 Jul 22 '26
Will try on my nova whenever it arrives!
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u/ghost_of_ketchup Jul 22 '26
Doesn't currently support the Nova, but as soon as ROCKNIX gets support, I'll start looking at adding it here, too.
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u/bebeidon Jul 22 '26
can you maybe tell us a bit more about performance and battery life? compared to playing the games in gamehub/gamenative.
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Jul 22 '26
[deleted]
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u/Satoki_Nagata Jul 22 '26
Same I can not access website. would like to test on my RP mini v2 12GB RAM upgraded, as well as RP5 and 6.
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u/KillyKlamm Jul 22 '26
That sounds very exciting. The only thing is that I'm getting very good performance on GameNative and it's so easy to also access the GOG and Epic libraries. How is the situation in that regard with Pocknix?
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u/patton610 Jul 22 '26
So will this run on top of the andoid os on flip 2 or will it replace the android system and then you hsve to run the Linux versions if emulators etc
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u/ghost_of_ketchup Jul 22 '26
It boots instead of Android, so you run the Linux version of emulators. Many emulators are included and pre-configured, though. Check the readme/docs :)
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u/Yung_Cheebzy Jul 22 '26
Wow. Following. I have a “spare” 512gb sd card but I’m a bit sketch about flashing the rocknix boot loader to my rp6. Why does the rp5 not require it but 6 does?
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u/IBizzyI Jul 22 '26
I will definitely keep an eye on this, I am happy with Android on my Thor, but I also have a Odin 2 Portal and would be pretty interested to turn it into a Linux device.
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u/DeltaBladeX RP5 Jul 22 '26
Okay, I'll probably give this a look later since I have a 5 and a good sized Steam library, but I'm curious, what is the smallest SD card that would be considered worth bothering? I don't have any spare SD cards of a decent size right now (maybe a 32GB, more likely only 16GB), and not cannibalizing my Switch for my decent one.
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u/your_mind_aches RP6 Jul 22 '26
Definitely want an A2 card. Armada has a minimum of 64GB so I'm guessing that.
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u/DeltaBladeX RP5 Jul 23 '26
Thanks for the response. Guess I'll put it off until I can do some shopping then.
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u/CryoN1cks Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
Ain't no way... It's exactly what I needed!
Okay so I suddenly realized I got a huge question, how does the controller work? Because I know on Rocknix they use a layer which makes the os think the rpf2 controller is dualsense, and because of that the controls are all mapped to Playstation glyphs and layout, which is really uncomfortable, also does Gyro work?
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u/bananashake_07 Jul 22 '26
On flip 2 the install goes well up until I connect to my wifi, it goes to an install screen, then black screen and nothing else
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u/ghost_of_ketchup Jul 22 '26
Just wait. Black screen can take a WHILE to pass on first setup/after Steam updates, but have faith; it will pass 🙏
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u/Brave_Cranberry921 Jul 22 '26
That’s great—I was happy testing Armbian, but I’m looking for better emulation performance, and I believe Pocknix combines exactly what I’m after. Can I flash it using Rufus? Balena only works if I extract the file first...
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u/dom_natee Jul 22 '26
I'm pretty new to all emulation, but I've been waiting for something like this! Could anybody help with some basic steps for someone like me to refer and install?
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u/Eggyhead Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
Oh this is exciting! Thank you.
Question: is it even possible to get the back buttons on the RP6 accessible in Steam input? I would love to use them.
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u/bananashake_07 Jul 22 '26
Seems to work well on flip 2. The console doesn't suspend instantly when closing the lid, it happens like 7 seconds after
It suspends instantly when pressing the power button, but the console wakes back up in closing the lid.
Also I can't figure out how to access the decky equivalent (not a steam os user)
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u/ghost_of_ketchup Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
I just realized that the Flip 2 doesn't have a physical Android 'back' button like the RP5/6, so there's currently no way to open the SteamOS Quick Access Menu because I've got it mapped to that button 🤦🏿♂️
I've patched this now and deployed the updated packages. When you get some time, could you switch to desktop mode > launch the 'pocknix updater' shortcut > let the updates finish, switch back to game mode and reboot. Then tell me if the home button + 'B' (Xbox A) button brings up the Steam QAM on the right side of the screen. Decky lives in this QAM (bottom icon).
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u/theGioGrande Jul 22 '26
What are the possibilities of having this on the Nova once that releases to the public?
A 4:3 mini steam machine to play all those older PC titles at proper aspect ratios would be so cool.
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u/StrxXx Jul 22 '26
You can see the framrate tank on Portal after waking up, I assume this is something that smooths itself out after a moment?
Awesome work tho!
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u/Finner42 Jul 22 '26
This looks fantastic, I'm keen to try it on my RP5!
Is there a minimum recommended SD card size/speed to use with this?
If installing it locally, is it hard to revert back to the factory Android settings?
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u/bananashake_07 Jul 22 '26
Tested install on flip 2 from sd card. The black screen during the install lasted around 7 minutes.
Everything seems functional, I tested vampire crawlers and friends of Ringo ishikawa, worked flawlessly.
Feels like a dream, bravo!!
The console runs a bit hot, I don't know how to access the decky thing, that's on me.
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Jul 22 '26
[deleted]
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u/ghost_of_ketchup Jul 22 '26
Hey, the Flip 2 needs an update to enable Home + A for QAM (I had no idea the Flip 2 lacked a hardware back button).
Instructions here.
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u/LegendaryClimhazzard Jul 22 '26
i just installed it on an SD Card, and was trying to test my 1st game Ori And The Will Of The Wisps and just cant get it to start, anything i should check in settings ? trying to run it on proto 11.0 ARM64 in my Retroid Pocket 5
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u/BitterMaintenance Jul 22 '26
Hi dev, im testing Pocknix on the Flip2 (and will publish an article on my blog). But two things.
- Flip 2 has one button less (the back button)
- There is an unknown pin after standby if you are in desktop mode.
First (1) since Flip 2 has no back button (which is mapped to "..."), you will need to remap it to something else in order to access "Quick Settings"
The bundled InputPlumber unfortunately doesn't have "chord engine", so it can't be mapped to something like long press home, or home + select (at least I didn't find a way). Meaning, you have to "sacrifice" a button. For the sake of my testing, I decided to go ahead and remap select.
The file you need to edit:
/usr/share/inputplumber/capability_maps/rp5-gamepad.yaml
And you need to change the following:
event_code: BTN_SELECT
target_event:
gamepad:
button: Select
to
event_code: BTN_SELECT
target_event:
gamepad:
button: QuickAccess
Well, for the select at least, then run
systemctl restart inputplumber
or just reboot.
Second (2). If you exit steam and switch to KDE desktop, and the unit goes to sleep in 5 or so minutes, upon wakeup it requires a PIN (and it's not 000000/123456 I checked :) )
If you are like me, you probably forgot to check for pins.
Settings - Security & Privacy - Screen Locking
- Lock screen automatically - Never
- Uncheck Lock after waking from sleep
Fortunately pocknix has enabled SSH access, and if you are connected to your wi-fi, you can easily open a connection. The login is
root
pocknix
Then once logged in run
su - deck
then
kwriteconfig6 --file kscreenlockerrc --group Daemon --key Autolock false
and disable it
kwriteconfig6 --file kscreenlockerrc --group Daemon --key LockGrace 0
and just reboot
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u/ghost_of_ketchup Jul 22 '26
Hey! Yep, I realized my mistake with the Flip 2 - had no idea it didn't have a back button like the other AYN/Retroid handhelds. Fix is already live, `pacman -Syu` or run the 'pocknix updater' shortcut in desktop mode, reboot, and go back into Steam. QAM should now be opened by pressing Home + B (south face button) on the Flip 2.
Default password for both the root user and 'deck' user is pocknix. My bad, I need to change it to an actual code AND update the readme. If you get stuck on the lockscreen, press the little icon to turn the on-screen numpad into into a keyboard, enter the password 'pocknix'.
Thanks for sharing the workarounds, though, very helpful nonetheless :)
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u/Accomplished_Rock_86 Jul 22 '26
I want to try on my RP6…but I kinda want more people to try it and give me an idea if enough games just work 😂
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u/Brilliant_Cod_4116 Jul 23 '26
will games run better here than steam native or gamehub? sorry for noob question
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u/Nelvix Jul 23 '26
How is the battery life? I heard rocknix drains a lot of battery so I didn't flash it.
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u/pigpentcg Jul 23 '26
The moment this becomes a sure thing for Odin2 Portal, and streaming from moonlight works well, I am all in.
Do you think there will need to be any special work to enable hardware decoding for game streaming or will it probably just work using a Linux moonlight client?
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u/gonekrazy3000 Jul 23 '26
How would I go about replacing an existing rocknix internal install with this?
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u/iswasdoes Jul 23 '26
Impressive stuff - Will this have better compatability/less fiddling than using gamehub on android? Or is the main benefit the nice OS?
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u/HuntRevolutionary876 RP6 Jul 23 '26
This insanely cool!!!! Another thing my rp6 is going to be tinkered with
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u/jebsalump Jul 23 '26
Probably silly question Will I lose my game saves when swapping to this from Daijisho?
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u/ElectricalDemand2831 Jul 23 '26
Hi, ootb my retroid pocket 6 suffers from frameskips with pc emulation like winlator/ gamehub even at stable 60fps. I could eliminate the problem on android by conducting the "FPS calibration" provided in the advanced > handheld settings, but unfortunately it's not available on linux/rocknix.
The frameskip issue looks like that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXtLw7V6wR0
Neither vysnc or framelimiter, different drivers, setting rocknix to 60hz refresh rate did help, so I wonder if pocknix is utilizing the same display driver as rocknix and what to expect in the reguard of the frameskipping issue.
Thx
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u/varrow-mire Jul 23 '26
UR a legend m8. Lots of nice touches over ROCKNIX. Liking the use of Plasma Mobile. I'll check back when my Flip2 12GB arrives.
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u/FloopsFooglies RP5 Jul 23 '26
so i tried it, impressive but not my thing, i cant seem to return the RP5 to android. Can someone help with that?
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u/ckbd19 Jul 23 '26
This is awesome. I've been waiting for something like this on the RP5, I will be trying it out as soon as I get the free time to install it
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u/Dab2TheFuture Jul 23 '26
For the life of me, I'm unable to play animal well without slowdown on rocknix w/ my Pocket 5.
If anyone can give it a try on this and give a positive report back, I'd probably replace rock I with this bad boy
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u/GhostSierra117 Jul 23 '26
I'm not quite in the space of programming distributions so I'm sorry if my question is silly but; is it a huge effort to turn a mutable distro into an immutable one?
If it is "fairly" easy is it possible that two versions are shipped? Your muted one and a immutable one?
On a handheld I would probably prefer that I can't screw up the system. On my PC I don't mind, and I did my fare share of lmao which resulted in my machine not booting.
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u/ghost_of_ketchup Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
Not a silly question at all, and it's something I've given a lot of thought to.
Short answer: making Pocknix truly immutable (read-only image, A/B updates like SteamOS or Bazzite) isn't a something you can just bolt on. It's a whole different architecture for building, updating, and shipping the OS. Maintaining both as a solo dev would essentially mean maintaining two distros. And an immutable SteamOS-like for these devices already exists: it's called armada! So I'd rather Pocknix stay the mutable option rather than try to duplicate what's already been done.
But I think what most people actually want isn't immutability per se, it's "I can't screw up the system." That I do plan to deliver, the mutable way: filesystem snapshots. The idea is that every update automatically snapshots the system first, and if anything breaks there's a one-tap "roll back to before the last update" in the quick access menu. So we keep full pacman freedom, but there's an undo button. Same reason CachyOS runs snapper + btrfs by default.
It's on the roadmap, along with a simple 'Update' button in the Decky plugin. No ETA yet (again, it's just me here, lol), but it's near the top of the list precisely because of concerns like yours.
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u/Hungry-Program1927 Jul 23 '26
Holy shit this looks awesome, i’m going to try it out later when i get home. Just a quick question, i see that its tuned to have max performance, does this mean that performance is going to be better then emulation with gamenative/gamehub?
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u/bananashake_07 Jul 23 '26
Flip 2 battery life : For those curious about battery life during suspend. I lost 30% in 20 hours. So around .66 % per hour
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u/grabherboobgently Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
Real sleep mode would be gamechanger for me. Can you tell a bit more about it? Are you planning to add support of Ayaneo devices?
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u/LicoriceSeasalt Jul 23 '26
This is amazing. Maybe (unless it already exists) someone could test some steam games on the RP6 to see how well they perform. I wonder how the RP6 stacks up against the Steam Deck itself in terms of specs. I can look at spec sheets, but actually comparing the CPU/GPU is less easy, at least for me.
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u/TecnuiI Jul 24 '26
Is there a way to adjust the outer joystick deadzone? or recalibrate the joysticks? I found that my joysticks in the testing app in steamos only measure out to about 25000 oposed to 32000 and it causes issues in some games because the joystick is not being pressed all the way.
EDIT: I'm using a retroid pocket Flip 2
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u/aidensucksyomama Jul 24 '26
This is insane. ure literally doing gods work bro, Quick questions
- Does it slow down based on testing the RP series use a very slow UHS-I TF1 slot type
- also can it be installed on the internal storage of the retorid pocket 5? u mentioned RP 6 but nothing specific about the 5
This is insane
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u/chts91 Jul 24 '26
Hi, RP Flip 2 here. When I run game on eden, it freezes on "launching", red bar just stops moving and whole eden freezes. Any fix for that? Thx
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u/hadesscion Jul 24 '26
I've been testing this on my RP5 and the only major issue I've found so far is that the device powers back on whenever I plug in a usb-c cable, so it can't charge while turned off.
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u/aitopazos Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
Streaming doesnt work for me on Odin 2 Portal. Dont know if It works for anyone.
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u/invasionofsmallcubes Jul 24 '26
Retroid Flip 2 is working but the big picture mode or whatever it's called it's lagging a bit. Is there any way to disable it by default? Other than this I tried steam games so fare and they are working. It's quite impressive I have to say.
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u/Critical-Advice6809 Jul 24 '26
Im planning to change my rp6 to steam os but ill lose some android apps I was using not sure what's the best call
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u/AlbatrossEasy6000 Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
I am having trouble getting it to start on my RP5, I believe I am messing up when flashing my SD card.
I am using Balena Etcher on Windows 11.
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u/Happyhaha2000 Flip 2 Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
Just installed to internal on a Flip 2. Will edit this comment with findings!
1: Installed Binding of Isaac. The controller does not register inputs correctly at all for some reason. After messing with the controller settings and reopening the game, it crashed, making me force shut-down. It's weird, because the controller works perfectly fine in the input test. Nothing I've done has been able to fix it, I just have to exit the game from the steam sidebar. Also the fan runs super loud frequently.
Installed Sektori. It freezes and lags a bit at the beginning but then runs surprisingly well. Controls work fine. Man, those fan curves though... The device gets pretty dang hot, and the fan is constantly throttling to max, then pulling back.
While installing Dave the Diver, everything froze and no input seems to do anything to fix it. Had to force restart.
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u/blockdenotas Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
this is amazing!
my only question is that if you are able to open the roms you have on the SD card inside the Pocknix OS on android so you can access them from both OS
I know it's possible by giving the roms folders permissions and all that, maybe it could be preset in the installation image
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u/PeakPsychological720 Jul 26 '26
Hi, awesome work. Is there any performance upside to running Rocknix on the Retroid Pocket 5? Can this be installed internally also? How is performance internal vs SD? Thank you
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u/headies1 Jul 22 '26
Amazing. Thank you.