Need help with Raspberry Pi 4

Go to retropie reddit sub and I think there's a sticky there that walks you through it.

It's not 100% supported in the 4 yet so the install is tricky and buggy right now.

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What do you mean by you got it up and running? Did you ever get it to boot any operating system?

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So we originally got the Pi up and running with the operating system. I tried to do an install of RetroPie through Debian command line prompts...seemingly got it installed but then couldn't get RetroPie to actually run. After downloading the file through Debian, and then running a basic install of RetroPie, it didn't ask me if I wanted to autorun RetroPie on boot. But I rebooted the Pi, saw the RetroPie folders, so it looked like it was installed, but I couldn't figure out how to run it.

So then my son took the Micro SD card to install the img file, but I think he reformatted the card when he installed it.

So what you are saying is that all I need to do is install RetroPie, with Etcher, and it will automatically install the OS as well?

Maybe I will try Lakka instead of RetroPie

Thank you, thank you, thank you

you'd be crazy to buy a 3 right now given how much better the 4 is for emulation even if it means you have to wait for full support a bit longer.

Yeah, hopefully only has a few weeks wait. I’ve test some N64 emulation on my 4 4gig, it’s much better.

Mostly what korkstand said. You probably want to 'burn' the retropie img to the SD card. It sounds like you imaged rasbian which is the generic os and tried to install retropie which should also be possible but I've never tried it.

It sounds like it's not supported on the pi4 so perhaps you should go back to rasbian and let him tinker around with that until retropie has support on the 4. Pis are great little emulation consoles but that's not really going to teach your son to code by itself. It could familiarize him with Linux which is useful. If you want him to learn to code I'd suggest checking out a few issues of the raspberry pi magazine. the name escapes me but it's a free publication you can PDF download. It's full of creations people have made and frequently some outlines on how to do so yourself. Find something he wants to create and dive in. Might be able to lean python or something.

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Okay so with Lakka does that have the Rasbian OS included with it or do I need to install that first?

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The Lakka image that you will flash to the SD card does include a full OS, though it is not the full Raspbian OS.

There are hundreds of different Linux distributions, and Raspbian is but one of them. It is based on the Debian distribution, as is Ubuntu and many others.

Lakka bills itself as its own distribution, though it is based on the LibreELEC distro, which in turn is based on the OpenELEC distro.

I mention all this because Lakka is tailor-made for gaming. If you want to do anything else on it (like programming), it might be a pain to get the right software installed on it. It's not a huge deal, though. SD cards are cheap, and a new OS is only a flash away. At any time, you can unplug the Pi, pop out the Lakka card, put in a Raspbian card, boot it back up and do whatever else you want on it.


The Lakka site seems to have pretty simple step by step instructions for getting it installed. You choose the OS you're using to flash the card (presumably Windows), choose the hardware you want to run it on (Pi4), download the Lakka image, download/install Etcher, use Etcher to "burn" the image to your SD card, put the card in the Pi and boot up.

So what is your first project goi to be with he pi?

Guy at work uses it for LED lights around his whole house. He changes the colors based on the time of year.

I’m not sure I have anything fun that a kid would enjoy. I plan on eventually using a pi to automate my beer brewing process but I’m still working on the right equipment for that setup.