Meet Ubuntu Retro Remix, an Ubuntu Distro to Turn Your Raspberry Pi into a Retro Gaming Console

Meet Ubuntu Retro Remix, a new, upcoming Ubuntu distro designed for retro gamers and Raspberry Pi fans. It’s an unofficial remix of Ubuntu that will turn your Raspberry Pi into a retro gaming machine.

After building the Rolling Rhino, a command-line tool that lets you convert your regular Ubuntu installation into a rolling release, Canonical’s Ubuntu Desktop lead Martin Wimpress is now building a new Ubuntu-based distro specifically designed for Raspberry Pi computers and retro gaming, called Ubuntu Retro Remix.

Why retro gaming? Because Martin Wimpress is a hardcore retro gamer who built several Raspberry Pi retro games consoles using cases that imitate the classic retro gaming consoles.

As such, the Ubuntu Retro Remix distro is said to be able to run on several of these Raspberry Pi-based retro games consoles, including the MegaPi for Mega Drive, the NESPi+ for NES Classic, as well as the SuperPi for Super Nintendo (SNES). Each of these will be optimized to emulate the respective classic retro consoles.

So instead of installing Ubuntu for Raspberry Pi and then RetroPie, an open-source project that turns your Raspberry Pi into a retro gaming console, you can just install the Ubuntu Retro Remix distro directly on your Raspberry Pi-based retro games console and that’s it, everything will work out of the box.

Of course, if you don’t have any of these retro gaming cases for the Raspberry Pi, you can just install Ubuntu Retro Remix on a Raspberry Pi computer. Supported Raspberry Pi models include the Raspberry Pi 4, Raspberry Pi 3, and Raspberry Pi 2.

You can watch Martin Wimpress build the whole thing live on YouTube below. For more details, installation instructions, and usage, you should check out the project’s GitHub page. Keep in mind though that this is still work in progress and there’s nothing to download yet.