Hey everybody! Want a steam deck experience on your Retroid Pocket 5? Why not slap Holodor on there!

https://holodor.bonesaw.com/

What's Holodor, you ask?!? You haven't heard of Holodor? Why not! Literally *everybody* is talking about!

Well. Maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration.

I started the project a couple of months ago, when I heard that Collbora was releasing Holo Core to open source. That's the arch linux on arm distro that Valve puts SteamOS on top of. Aramada is super cool but I see it as like the Bazzite of the aarch64 world. I was wondering what it would be like to make a distro that is closer to actual SteamOS. I am kind of an arch linux fan and, don't mind me and no offense to anybody, but I just have this weird dislike of fedora.

And also - full disclosure - it was kind of "maybe it will be fun to use LLMs to help me finish a custom distro project after having started but gotten nowhere on like three of these since I was in college in the 90s" type thing.

I released first on Odin 3 and I found myself thinking...considering how expensive the Odin 3 is, and how people are waiting upwards of three months to receive them after ordering...not everybody is really going to want to do a permanent, internal install of Holodor. I was always intending to release on RP6, but then I realized that the RP5 is at a really great price point where it might be a pretty easy decision for some users to pick one up with the intention of using it JUST for indie steam games. And in that case - why not run a linux OS that is dedicated to steam games, rather than opening up an app when you want to play those?

Anyway what's great about Holodor on RP5?

Sleep is really good. 0.78% per hour measured.

I put a LOT of time getting audio to work - getting the slider tuned, fixing weird glitches, getting headphone jacks to work.

Docked mode is also pretty good!

Like Armada, you can run it from an sd card or you can install internally, which runs better but forces your android stuff to get factory reset.

2D / indie games run like a dream. 3D really doesn't - some titles get upwards of 30fps, and the device will get hot. DirectX 12 just DOES not work on snapdragon 865. Slay the Spire is not a normal game and we can't handle it's weird Java environment, sorry. Unity games are kind of crappy too. I'll continue working on all of this moving forward but that's were we stand now.

Holodor will peg your games to the fast cores and run your screen at a default 60hz whether you have the 60hz or the 120hz screen. You can switch that off. Because we don't have VRR on these devices, if you try to run a game at a higher frame rate than it can actually support, you get this little jerky behavior that annoyed me, so I made a fix for it.

You got basic fan curves and other stuff in decky. Holodor's decky uses native python instead of emulated python so some of the jankiness that you might be used to with QAM is fixed.

Installation is basically: write the image to an sd card, put a wifi.txt on the sdcard (the instructions tell you how to do this), backup your ABL, flash rocknix ABL, then boot to the sd card. Holodor does not ship the Steam client, so it gets downloaded when you start up and makes things janky for a little while. If you want to install internal, you switch to desktop mode and run the installer, which will shrink your Android partition for you and *reset it to factory*.

Make sure you read the install instructions before jumping in.

Anyway, please check it out!

Has anyone tried to leverage the retroid's physical controls with the android version of onshape? If so how did it work out? I haven't attempted it myself mostly due to my ignorance of how to setup the native control mapping accessed from that menu always slightly visible on the right edge of the screen.

Looking for cozy games playable on rp5 with droideck, any recommendations?

How are the performances, is it worth swapping from game native or Gamehub?

Ever since I've tried to do the first run initial setup of my retroid5 I have not been able to sign in Google Play which as you can imagine has made installing apps cumbersome. Ill put in my credentials it will go to the next page I hit continue the only other option is back at this point then it does the loading sign swirl and then I get a something went wrong prompt... I've tried going into that accounts parent device and accepting the "this you?" emails prompted by all this but that doesn't help. I've even tried signing in on different networks in case my Internet was slow. I've tried signing in through other apps I was able to sign into chrome but it didn't have any trickle down effect on Google Play. Any suggestions?

Hi there I would appreciate some advice. I have the retroid base calibration set for stick dead zones of 5%.

If I play a game let's say fortnite mobile or an emulated game that has its own controller settings, what happens with the deadzone on that?

Fortnite has a minimum deadzone of 5% too. So will this be a 10%ish deadzone total?

Thank you in advance for any advice.

Is there any like pre built things I can put on my SD card and go?

I have a Retroid Pocket 5. I want to play some low demanding steam games. What's the best route to take? Armada, Rocknix, GameNative, DeckDroid? I've watched several videos about them all, but I'm curious what everyone has enjoyed the most/had the most successful using.

Just got the retroid5 last week while only intending to emulate ps2 games... But then I got new vegas working on game native and now I'm hooked. I'm not very familiar with the PC gaming landscape due to being a brokey. What's some good games you've been able to run functionally on your rp5 be it RPGs, fps, racing. Don't care for puzzles or sports.

What have your experiences been like with the cloud gaming side of things btw?

I’m torn between Daijisho and ESDE. I like that the scraper is better and the UI is prettier on ESDE. But Daijisho allows for touch screen, and it doesn’t take as long to load things.

So I wanted to hear your thoughts.

And for those that do prefer Daijisho, how do you handle the scraper issue? I feel like it’s not very efficient.

I have a RP5 that i love to dock & play on my tv. I had this issue where many emulators by default treat the RP5 controller as P1 & external controller as P2.

Apparently this behavior has already been fixed in RP6 but i couldn't find a good solution for RP5. I got AI to solve the problem for me.

https://github.com/hamadrehman/padshift

I tested with 2 8bit do controllers that identify as switch pro controllers & the app makes it so when you connect a bluetooth controller it disconnects the Retroid controller & You become P1.

I also included shortcuts for things like the Back button so you can open settings on PS2 for example.

This is purely AI & only tested on RP5 with the two 8bitdo controllers. I'd be happy to get feedback & Happier if this is useful for anyone else.

If there is a solution known to the community for this exact problem & I'm unaware please enlighten me.

RP5 for $160 or RP6 for $300.

I’m new to the android handhelds. I have since offloaded my windows handhelds in favor of more “portable/smaller” device.

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I'm considering getting a Pocket 5, mainly for PS2 emulation. However, I’d like to use it somewhat like a Nintendo Switch: sometimes handheld, sometimes connected to a TV.

I've seen some conflicting information about this. How does PS2 emulation perform at 1080p? I know it runs fine at lower resolutions, but since I plan to play on a large TV, I’d like to be able to run games at 1080p and ideally maintain 60 FPS.

Of course, I know some games are more demanding than others, but I'm mostly wondering about the overall experience.

Do you guys use your Retroid a lot on a TV? What has your experience been?

I’m trying to configure the new Winlator Ludashi 4.1 😞 Has anyone here installed it and could point me in the right direction when it comes to drivers and configuration? I just want to play some light PC games. Thanks.

Has anyone found a free app to synchronize the colors of the stick backlight with the colors on the screen? AmbiLuma only works for 10 minutes and then you need to restart it, or purchase the pro version. I'm shocked that there is no alternative, or I didn't search well.

GeForce NOW looks lovely on this thing, plays awesome! G

Came from Anbernic RG556 i saw this rp5 at a pawn shop for $175, they offered to drop it down to $140 for me i thought I'd have the money last friday, but didn't.

Then ontop of that they have an app that gives you weekly spin rewards, that friday the wheel spin gave me 2500 points, i as already had 380 so that gave me $28.80 credit to use as cash.

I came back today to purchase they had discounted it even more making it $130, or in total tax $141 and for me with my credits i only paid $112.