I know this question has been asked a few times but some of those posts are really old. I don’t want to run a stand alone retroarch image and the default clockwork os doesn’t seem to allow cores to be installed via the downloader so im curious what the rest of the community is doing in this regard. Or if there is a decent image i can piggy back off of.
You can compile Retroarch and the cores from source and it’ll run but I find that performance kinda sucks on the CM4 if you’re running it from inside a desktop environment (especially if you use shaders).
I know this isn’t the answer you’re looking for but you’re better off using the Retropie image with a spare SD card. Performance will be better running directly on the framebuffer than if you try to run Retroarch in Wayland or X11, and everything’s already set up for you.
1 Like
I can vouch, retropie runs amazing on the cm4. 
just installed yesterday and I’m adding 15gb of roms now. I mainly run retropie on a Rpi zero but the cm4 runs way smoother and the games look beautiful on the screen.
1 Like
Ok i just tried it, but retroarch is flipped 90 degrees and screen rotation doesn’t seem to solve the issue. Any suggestions?
Since the Retropie image is the best to use for emulation, but one of the many other images are better for other uses, I’m hoping someone eventually succeeds with a dual/multi boot option. There has been discussion, but that’s as far as it’s gone. With a large SD card, it would be convenient to be able to just boot into “emulation mode” when needed instead of swapping cards. That’s especially true since the SD card slot on the uConsole (or at least mine) is difficult to remove a card from easily.
If it’s just the menu for Retroarch that is rotated, that’s a known issue. See:
and the 4th bullet under the Retropie release here:
- Correct Monitor rotation out the box. - retroarch menu cannot be rotated.
ok thanks i hadn’t run any roms yet cause i haven’t installed the cores. good to know its just the menu