User:Dapowah/sandbox

Recalbox is a free and open source operating system dedicated to the emulation, preservation, and accessibility of old video games (also known as retrogaming).

Recalbox is a project that mainly targets beginners and technophobes, due to its relative ease-of-use and simple out-of-box experience. The OS includes many open-source games on the first installation and is free of copyrighted content (such as licensed ROMs, system BIOSes, etc.). Unless explicitly authorized, Recalbox is forbidden to be resold or used for any commercial purpose, as stated in its own user license agreements, as well as the license agreements of the RetroArch/libretro project of which Recalbox is based upon.

History
Recalbox was launched in January 2015 by digitalLumberjack after his sister expressed the desire to play old video games from their childhood. At that time, the emulation scene had already been established, but digitalLumberjack believed that the current offerings were too complex and difficult for the general public. With this in mind, digitalLumberjack spent a few weeks during Christmas of 2014 to develop a solution that could easily be used by many people. The goal was to create an interface that never required a keyboard or mouse to interact with. He immediately decided to make the project free and open-source, in order to make the video game community more accessible, as well as to recruit additional people for development support.

In 2020, Recalbox is composed of a dozen regular developers, a community manager, around 30 beta testers, and about fifty occasional contributors (in charge of translation, graphics, videos, web management), all of whom are volunteers on the project.

Technology
Recalbox is buily on the success of the low-cost Raspberry Pi microcomputer. The idea is to offer an all-in-one retro gaming solution with a plug and play user experience.

Unlike other solutions, such as Retropie, Recalbox is not based on a pre-compiled Linux distribution (Raspberry Pi OS), but instead starts from a blank slate, relying on Buildroot. This allows Recalbox's developers to build a custom operating system with full control over its content, only adding what is deemed necessary.

Projects featured in Recalbox
Recalbox is built on an array of many independent components (emulator cores), brought together using a graphical interface, the EmulationStation frontend. The operating system also includes the Kodi media center which can be navigated entirely with a controller or keyboard. It possible to switch between Kodi and the Recalbox interface directly from the menus, without having to reboot.

External projects
Many external projects are integrated into the Recalbox system, often modified to fit the needs of its ecosystem (standardizing interfaces or controls):

Internal projects
The Recalbox operating system also relies on projects developed in-house, including:


 * recalbox-emulationstation2 (customized EmulationStation)
 * recalbox-configgen
 * recalbox-hardware (automatic hardware detector )
 * recalbox-manager2 (web manager for modifying Recalbox via a web browser)
 * recalbox-romfs
 * recalbox-themes (theme manager)

Hardware compatibility
As of version 7.1.1 Reloaded, Recalbox is compatible with board of the Raspberry Pi family (Zero, 1, 2, 3, 4, 400), in addition to the ODROID line of boards (XU4, XU4Q, as well as the GO Advance and Go Super handhelds ). Recalbox also has support for X86 and X86-64 based systems, including the Intel NUC.

Recalbox is compatible with many accessories and controllers, such as the DualShock 3 and 4, Xbox 360 controller, Xbox One Controller, or 8BitDo controllers. In addition, there is support for the NesPi and GPi Raspberry Pi cases, which the system configures itself for at first installation.