#1 2024-09-10 02:05:57

thomasafine

Member

From: Boston

Registered: 2024-08-27

Posts: 7

retroarch on old 32-bit hardware

Hi,

I have a brand new bunsenlabs installation on my Dell Mini 10v netbook (Atom N270 with GMA 950 graphics).  I tried to install retroarch (and it worked) but I get an error running, which upon googling I see that apparently Mesa no longer supports the graphics driver that I'm using (i915).

Is there an easy way to downgrade Mesa?  It looks like 21.3.9 might do it.  Is there anyway to revert to this?  The various commands I've found suggest that this version is no longer in the repos (nor any version but the current one?).  Or is there a repo for getting mesa-amber?  or do I have to download and build mesa-amber package by hand?  And if I do, do I need to purge all the old mesa packages first?

Is there some other way to get retroarch to work on my retro hardware (irony)?

advTHANKSance

hhh

Gaucho

From: High in the Custerdome

Registered: 2015-09-17

Posts: 16,173

Website

Re: retroarch on old 32-bit hardware

https://wiki.debian.org/RetroArch

https://wiki.debian.org/Mesa

https://docs.mesa3d.org/gallium/distro.html

You're on your own, I have no clue what any of this is.

https://www.retroarch.com/

https://web.libretro.com/

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I don't care what you do at home. Would you care to explain?

DeepDayze

Like sands through an hourglass...

From: In Linux Land

Registered: 2017-05-28

Posts: 1,901

Re: retroarch on old 32-bit hardware

You should be able to use modesetting driver as i915 is sort of deprecated.

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Real Men Use Linux

Bearded_Blunder

Dodging A Bullet

From: Seat: seat0; vc7

Registered: 2015-09-29

Posts: 1,146

Re: retroarch on old 32-bit hardware

You should be able to use modesetting driver as i915 is sort of deprecated.

"Should be" potentially being the issue, there's old hardware out there that doesn't play nice with the modesetting driver.

Unfortunately I'm no longer in a position to try any workarounds, my N270 based netbook died some time back owing to a motherboard fault & went in the e-waste pile.

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Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed...
If there's an obscure or silly way to break it, but you don't know what.. Just ask me

thomasafine

Member

From: Boston

Registered: 2024-08-27

Posts: 7

Re: retroarch on old 32-bit hardware

Update: It randomly started working again.  I changed "video_driver" to "x11" and it started up.

However there may be more complexity.  The error reappeared when I tried to set retroarch to the xmb GUI.

Retroarch was always very fiddly.

At any rate, I never got around to trying to install mesa-amber.  But to answer a couple of points I raised above, it's my understanding that this gets installed alongside normal amber (rather than downgrading), and then you use environment variables per-application to specify which libraries will be selected at run time.