Lakka is an open-source operating system based on Linux that has only one purpose – run emulators for older consoles using MAME and FBA (both of these are emulator packages that work for a larger number of gaming consoles). Furthermore, Lakka is not only designed to work on Windows PC or Linux computers, but also supports Apple Mac. As far as hardware support goes, Lakka supports all the computer capable of running Windows, Mac and Linux as well as all the Raspberry Pi models, WeTek Play devices, and their variants. So no matter what type of computer you have, you can turn it into a dedicated game console.
Here are the various steps you need to take to run Lakka on your system:
- Visit http://www.lakka.tv/get/ and choose the operating system of your computer. If you have Raspberyy Pi, even then you should select the operating system of the computer on which you will be preparing the memory card. For a Windows PC, we will choose Windows.
- In the second step, where you have to select a hardware type you should find PC as the hardware unless you are using Raspberry PI or WeTek devices. You will then see download links for 32-bit or 64-bit system, both are around 300 MB in size.
- Use Win32DiskImager to create a bootable USB drive using this downloaded pre-compiled image.
- Once the USB drive is ready, you can boot into your PC using this bootable USB drive that now contains a copy of the Lakka operating system.
Instructions are similar for Linux or Mac but different tools are used to create the bootable media. All of these tools and their links are available on the Lakka website itself. But Lakka does not provide any games with the operating system and you will have arrange the ROM files for the games yourself.