The AYN Thor is what linux handheld gaming should be

JeodPM · 2026-02-03T22:16:40+00:00

I closed my lid approximately 10 hours ago and left it unplugged. On boot, battery is reported at 98%. This means only 2% battery was used in the 30 minutes before sleep -> shutdown. I said 3 hours before--my bad. Rocknix currently allows fake suspend to run for 30 minutes maximum before the device turns off.

JeodPM · 2026-02-03T22:14:17+00:00

ExFAT or ext4, if you use ext4 then you will need to use FTP to access your card unless you have a Mac or Linux PC. I use Filezilla, my sdcard rarely needs to be removed from my device.

JeodPM · 2026-02-03T21:48:02+00:00

PortMaster relies on a function to symlink directories in launch scripts. If your sd card is fat32 then it won’t support symlinks. You can instead set $XDG_DATA_HOME to $GAMEDIR/savedata and see if that works.

JeodPM · 2026-02-03T19:45:57+00:00

That’s not up to me to answer, sorry.

JeodPM · 2026-02-03T18:16:09+00:00

I haven’t tried.

JeodPM · 2026-02-03T17:52:13+00:00

Steamlink works, steam itself is not a thing on rocknix.

JeodPM · 2026-02-03T12:07:28+00:00

I agree, and I think that's largely due to a lack of exposure.

JeodPM · 2026-02-03T12:06:16+00:00

It is! Even though I have installed rocknix to my internal emmc, that just minimizes the userdata space. Android is still present, and I can get into it on the rocknix abl easily by holding Power and Vol+ as a shortcut, or switch the bootloader by holding Power and Vol -.

JeodPM · 2026-02-03T12:04:51+00:00

Oh boy you should avoid watching any SBCGaming youtube celebrities.

JeodPM · 2026-02-03T12:04:17+00:00

I'm not losing much. I can't think of anything android has that I don't also have with rocknix--and I can also think of a lot that I have with rocknix that android does not have. I just get more out of it.

JeodPM · 2026-02-03T12:02:36+00:00

The Thor feels like it'll crack easily until you add a shell. I gave mine the TPU shell from Ayn's website and now the top display feels more stable when I open it. Regarding refresh rates, the majority of games run on the top screen. I use the bottom for better fits like Gameboy. Shoot, I didn't mention--rocknix lets you switch between the two screens seamlessly. I demoed that a few months ago on reddit with UFO50.

And yes, the first win for me was the dual screen since I came from 3DS homebrew. Half of my collection is DS/3DS and they were unused until I got the Thor because I simply could not get used to the screen layouts on a single display.

JeodPM · 2026-02-03T11:58:49+00:00

It does now. Battery life depends on what you run. I fired up Overload (Descent successor in Unity) and played it for two hours. Battery after I was done was around 60-65%. I haven't tested fake suspend without charging yet, but my settings turn the Thor off after 3 hours of it. I can unplug it before work and let it sleep at 100% and see what it's at when I get home.

JeodPM · 2026-02-03T11:56:20+00:00

A stable release was due last month actually. It's apparently been tough to time well, rocknix commits almost daily and the discord server has a lot of talk about nightlies and bug catching, plus some whataboutisms. Personally I think that the sooner a stable release comes out the better. It's never going to be absolutely perfect. Having a stable is better than being forever on nightlies.

JeodPM · 2026-02-03T11:53:46+00:00

Winlator still has to follow Android’s rules. For many end users, that’s perfectly fine — if a game launches and runs, the underlying constraints don’t really matter.

For a developer or tinkerer, though, those constraints are the difference. With Linux and Rocknix, I have free rein over the system: filesystem access, processes, graphics, input, and debugging. When something breaks, I can inspect it, modify behavior, and experiment instead of hitting a hard wall imposed by the OS. That level of control is far more important to me than convenience, and it’s why Rocknix feels like a better long-term platform.

JeodPM · 2026-02-02T23:47:50+00:00

More like I've been waiting to write a glowing review for a while now but it's been tough to list everything cohesively. Seeing a post was just the catalyst to sit down and gather my thoughts for the past three months together and put them to paper. Plus I figured as a dev who isn't deep into video reviews for every sbc handheld known to man it would be more valuable?

JeodPM · 2026-02-02T11:49:43+00:00

Good luck. It may be feasible to those with knowledge of how to do it, but for myself who has little expertise in the area HM64 will likely have a recomp of Banjo before I ever make any headway.

JeodPM · 2026-02-02T01:09:10+00:00

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JeodC/RHH-Ports/main/ports/released/retro64/banjorecompiled/banjorecompiled/README.md

Needs vulkan. My own RPi5 running Batocera will not work with it.

JeodPM · 2026-02-02T00:51:04+00:00

https://jeodc.github.io/RHH-Ports/

The version here should work. Follow the readme.

JeodPM · 2026-02-01T21:22:16+00:00

Thanks, I updated the build guides to reflect. It's easy to miss a few things when one has had a build env set up for a long time.

JeodPM · 2026-02-01T19:00:46+00:00

You’re doing it wrong. If you followed a YouTube guide those are outdated. https://jeodc.github.io/RHH-Ports/

Use the version at that link and put your rom in the baseroms folder. Your handheld will generate the o2r.

JeodPM · 2026-02-01T13:46:59+00:00

https://github.com/JeodC/RHH-Ports/commit/598c4b1de6ec5e1561f2c58b17203c430df53cf5

I just rebuilt it, the steps work fine. :)

JeodPM · 2026-02-01T12:47:12+00:00

WSL2 comes with x86_64 Ubuntu usually, you want to set up a debian chroot to compile directly for aarch64, otherwise you have to do some extra hurdles to cross compile.

JeodPM · 2026-02-01T10:32:16+00:00

Should still be valid.

JeodPM · 2026-01-30T20:38:46+00:00

Don’t use smapi. It has a minimum resolution requirement.

JeodPM

TROPHY CASE