Lakka is a free, lightweight, and open-source Linux distro that turns a small PC into a full-blown game console. It features a beautiful and user-friendly UI with eye candy colours and a PS4-like User Experience.
You can install it on your SD card and easily set it up or run it LIVE. Its wide range of joypad support allows you to use PlayStation, XBox, and Nintendo game controllers.
If you don’t have a PC to use Lakka on you can dedicated hardware at a cost as low as $30 thanks to its support for a variety of computers not excluding Raspberry Pi, Raspberry 2, HummingBoard, Banana Po, Odroid, CuBox-i, Cubietruck, and Cubieboard 2.
Lakka is the official OS of RetroArch which takes care of its inputs and display, and it implements all game systems as a libretro core. This separation ensures that users are able to configure their setup once and have their changes effected across all game systems.
Lakka – The Open Source Game Console
Features in Lakka
- Free to download on any GNU/Linux distro.
- Open-source: Lakka is developed by a community of coders, designers, and games on GitHub.
- Lightweight: Lakka is optimized to run fast even on low-end architectures or PCs with low specs.
- Supports several USB joypads.
- Lakka runs seamlessly on RaspberryPi.
- The official OS of RetroArch and the libretro ecosystem.
Lakka offers the best out-of-box experience with its well polished first boot which you can run through without configuring any gamepads. It is free of bloatware and boots fast so If you enjoy playing retro games Lakka is perfect for you.
Mind you, Lakka is still undergoing heavy development so you might encounter some bugs or missing features. Feel free to report any bugs to the project’s issues tracker in the spirit of open-source.
Do you use Lakka to play retro games? If not what do you think of the project now? Feel free to drop your comments in the discussion box below.
