GhostBSD based alternative to batocera?

codytherudeguy

Can it be possible?
i'm open to suggestions

What it needs to do is boot directly into emulation station and use a lightweight desktop environment to display stuff

Most of the emulation station and included emulators stuff should not be too hard
a few features batocera has that i think would be hard to implement is the ability to run games using wine-tkg but also the ability to create a pad2key profile aka mapping keyboard presses to a controller

It can't just be mate with emulation station set to boot on startup because that's not controller friendly at all

I was thinking about using omarchy to do this but using ghostBSD as the base seems like a better challenge

Why though?
Because batocera is not very good (example ps2 emulation worked fine on v41 and then when v42 stable update was applied it was completely unstable) and the only support line they have is discord which is a terrible place to offer support as all people do on there is argue about whos right or wrong nine times out of ten

I'm not announcing that this is what i'm working on but rather i'm brainstorming the idea
if anyone wants to help lets do it lets make an emulation OS based on ghostBSD that not only has better support lines such as the forum here but actually runs emulators way better than batocera can
and lets keep it "actually stable"

vimanuelt

I think that would qualify as a new project — BatoceraBSD. 😉 Building a working prototype wouldn’t be difficult; it could likely be completed within a week.

If you plan to use GhostBSD packages, please consider making a monthly donation to help offset hosting and bandwidth costs. When hundreds of users download GhostBSD packages directly from GhostBSD servers, it can create a substantial financial burden on the project. Supporting the upstream project helps ensure its sustainability and continued development.

That said, I’d recommend basing the system on FreeBSD instead of GhostBSD to avoid placing additional load on GhostBSD’s infrastructure.

codytherudeguy

vimanuelt Yeah i think the suggestion of using freeBSD or something like that as a base is better idea
it really is seeming like something i'd need help with getting up and running theirs a ton of work to be done

Thanks for the response i will continue brainstorming it and maybe start work on it when i can
But yeah BSD really does need it's own retro gaming OS theirs too many Linux ones already

codytherudeguy

Looking into it i actually think using regular ghostBSD and just booting into emulation station on startup might actually work despite me thinking it would not

Now the question is
can emulation station be compiled on ghostBSD?

from the looks of it ES can do most of the things retro gamers would want to do from it's gui

it would be like a steamdeck setup you have desktop mode but by default it boots into emulation station

I'm going to give this a go i'll post again after the test results

codytherudeguy

So it can be done it would just require a lot of automation scripts and the default user having autologin and root abilities without a password by default

i'd have to install emulationstation which the ghostBSD repo has but then also have the script setup the directories set ES to autoboot and then delete the sh script after the install is done and then finally make an update system script that can be used within ES it would basically be a script that runs the update checker installs updates reboots system automatically or if nothing is found it just says no updates found exiting

This seems beyond my skill set so i'm going to end it here but yes the default ghostBSD isos can be turned into a retro gaming OS with the backend being mate or xfce it would just take lots of extra automation work to convert it correctly

vimanuelt

I’m not a big fan of using the ports system, as many ports end up unmaintained or outdated. To truly get the most out of GhostBSD or FreeBSD, it really helps to have some programming experience.