Retroid are renowned for creating remarkable Android retro handhelds, many of them making their way to the top of our best retro handhelds list many years in a row, and their most recent devices have been incredibly popular with the community, especially the Retroid Pocket Nova, which we have fallen in love with since it launched a few months ago.
Typically, these devices use Android as an operating system, and for good reason; it opens up a tonne of customisations, great emulation performance and the ability to explore your favourite Android games in a way that typically means you can pump of the graphical settings on them due to Retroid's impressive specifications, but for years now Linux fans have requested support on their devices, and until now Retroid showed no real sign of making that a possibility.
Retroid shared in their public Discord server today that mainline Linux for Retroid Pocket devices is here, specifically the Linux Kernel 7.3, which will work with the following devices (for now):
What's Working (For Now)
- Touchscreen Gamepad (RSInput)
- Joystick RGB lights (RP6 / Nova)
- Audio: speakers, headphones, internal mics, headset mic, DisplayPort audio (RP6 / Nova)
- Wi-Fi and Bluetooth (WCN7850 on RP6 / Nova, WCN7750 on Duo)
- GPU, Video decode/encode
- USB-C with DisplayPort alt mode, UFS storage, and microSD; PWM fan with thermal control
You'll certainly need some technical knowledge to get this installed on your device, but Retroid has shared all of the download links via GitHub, such as the Kernel (branch retroidpocket/v7.3), the Audio topology (branch retroidpocket/v1.0.5), and the UCM config (branch retroidpocket/v1.2.16). Retroid has stated that audio needs both the topology and the UCM config to be installed. Hopefully this helps those of you who have been wanting Linux on your modern Retroid devices!
Though I will state this is more along the lines of Retroid enabling the community to install Linux on the hardware/software level, I doubt they are liable for what happens if you do, nor do I believe they'll offer deep customer support for Linux installations from the community, but I may be wrong here; this feels more like a thumbs up from Retroid that it's possible, with some guidance, rather than a full-on collaboration that promises future Linux pre-installations on their devices.
