Buildroot Won't Build the Root!

Ugh, Buildroot won't build the root. Yesterday, I tried to set up a Buildroot system for robotics during our 9 a.m. - 6 p.m. meeting. The compilation would have taken forever on my laptop, so I tried it on my desktop through SSH. It took me until today, though, to figure out why it was not working. Apparently last time I tried to fix my desktop graphics, I broke a lot more than my graphics drivers. When I tried installing a dependency for compiling Buildroot, I was surprised to find my system in dependency hell.

To get out of this, I attempted to reinstall my operating system. This time I wanted to use Debian Stretch, because it had AMDGPU available (see previous post). However, the Stretch installer didn't work, so I instead installed Debian Jessie. That worked (slow graphics though. . .) and I was able to start the Buildroot compilation process. Hopefully it works this time. I am writing this while I am waiting, so the final outcome is yet to be determined.

Bonus Tech Stuff: Gaming Console Emulators on Linux

There are many open source console emulators available - both for newer (Wii) and older (Atari) consoles. For most older gaming systems, you can use RetroArch. RetroArch is an emulator framework for classic gaming consoles. There are RetroArch emulators for PSX, SNES, GBA, Sega Genesis, Atari 2600, and many other systems. There is a Linux distro called Lakka which acts as an easy-to-use front-end for RetroArch.

Wii and GameCube fans can use Dolphin - a high-speed, highly featured emulator. Wii and GameCube games are not actual system binaries - they are actually in an interpretive bytecode language. Dolphin dynamically compiles this bytecode into system code, allowing it to take advantage of high-performance hardware. The graphics are handled through OpenGL, so you can get better graphics than you would get on the actual console (HD/4K if you get a high-res texture mod). Dolphin also works with 84.4% of tested games, so you can run most games.

#slice2016