Our articles usually show you how to do things on a Raspberry Pi. This time, we’re changing things up: we’re going to show you how to use a PC or Mac to run the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s desktop operating system, Debian with Raspberry Pi Desktop (for brevity’s sake, we’ll call it just “Raspberry Pi Desktop” from now on). This Raspbian-like OS (as the names imply, both operating systems are based on Debian) allows you to use your PC or Mac as a kind of substitute for your Raspberry Pi. That makes it useful for testing out projects when your Pi isn’t handy. It’s also fun because it backs the familiar Raspbian interface with your PC or Mac’s hardware, which is much more powerful than the little Pi.
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The simplest way to get Raspberry Pi Desktop up and running is to install the operating system, but that will require you to dedicate a computer to the project (or at least to partition a hard drive). If you want to keep running Windows or macOS on your computer, your best bet is to run Raspberry Pi Desktop on a virtual machine – which is exactly what we’ll show you how to do in this guide.
It provides the Raspberry Pi OS desktop, as well as most of the recommended software that comes with Raspberry Pi OS, for any PC or Apple Mac computer. If you have an old computer that is no longer powerful enough to run a modern commercial operating system, try Debian with Raspberry Pi Desktop: it can often make the computer usable once more. How to run Raspberry Pi OS in a virtual machine on Windows, Linux or macOS? VirtualBox, VMWare and QEMU are three solutions to virtualize a Raspberry Pi. These emulators can run Raspberry Pi OS on a standard PC running Windows, Linux or macOS. And here we’ll see how to do it with these three tools, from your favorite operating system. Raspberry pi emulation for mac free download. Etcher Etcher is a powerful OS image flasher. It protects a user from accidentally overwriting hard-drives.
Raspberry Pi Emulator will allow you to run Raspbian created code on your Mac. The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer, used for developing software, hardware, in use for IOT projects, and education. This software successfully emulates the computer, now, you can work on your Raspberry projects on your Mac.
How to run Raspberry Pi Desktop on Windows or macOS
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Step 1: Download and install VirtualBox
Because we’re going to run Raspberry Pi Desktop on a virtual machine, we’ll need to download Oracle VM VirtualBox. In Oracle’s own words, “VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use.”
You can download the software from VirtualBox’s Downloads page. Just choose the right version for your operation system (there are two: a Windows version and a macOS version). After you’ve downloaded the executable, install VirtualBox by following the installation wizard’s instructions.
Step 2: Download Debian with Raspberry Pi Desktop
Next, you’ll need to download the image file of Raspberry Pi Desktop from the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s site.
Step 3: Launch VirtualBox and create a new virtual machine
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Now that we’ve both VirtualBox and Raspberry Pi Desktop downloaded, we’re ready to launch VirtualBox and create a new virtual machine.
Click “New,” and you should see a screen like this:
We don’t want to create a Windows virtual machine, of course, so let’s change the settings a bit. First, choose a descriptive name for your virtual machine (for example, “Raspberry Pi”), then select Linux from the Type dropdown menu and Debian (64-bit) from the Version dropdown menu. After that, click Next.
On the next screen, you can use the recommended memory size of 1024 MB – this corresponds to the Raspberry Pi 3’s memory size.
The next screen is about adding a hard disk to your new virtual machine. Just click Create, unless you have some reason to modify the settings. Then, click Next on this screen and again on the next.
Finally, you can choose the size of your hard disk. We used the recommended size of 8 GB, but you may want to have a larger hard disk. When you’re ready, click Create.
Now we have the settings of our virtual machine in place.
Step 4: Install Raspberry Pi Desktop
Click Start to start the installation of Raspberry Pi Desktop. You should see a screen like this:
Browse to the folder where you saved the image file of Raspberry Pi Desktop, select the file, and click Start. What you should see next is a menu titled “Debian GNU/Linux installer boot menu.” Use the arrow keys – or i – and Enter to select Install.
On the next screen, select your preferred keyboard layout and continue by pressing Enter.
Choose Guided – use the entire disk and keep pressing Enter to Select disk to partition and choose the Partitioning scheme. Finally, Finish partitioning and write changes to disk.
You might want to grab a cup of coffee or tea while the system is installing.
After a while, the installation wizard prompt you: “Install the GRYB boot loader to the master boot record?” Select Yes, and choose /dev/sda.
When the installation wizard has installed everything, you should see a screen like this:
Look familiar? If you’ve used Raspbian before, it should!
Step 5: Make the virtual machine interactive
Our virtual machine is successfully running Raspberry Desktop now, but the screen size is a bit small, and it doesn’t get bigger when you click Maximize. We can make our machine more interactive by installing VirtualBox Guest Additions. Guest Additions makes it possible for us to resize the screen, use the clipboard, and share files between our PC or Mac and the virtual machine.
To do this, first open Terminal and make sure that your system is up to date:
You’ll have to type the commands because our virtual machine isn’t very cooperative, yet.
Now we’re ready to install VirtualBox Guest Additions:
With Guest Extensions installed, click on the Devices menu and select Shared Clipboard > Bidirectional.
If you rebooted your virtual machine now, you would be able to use the same clipboard on both your PC or Mac and the virtual machine. You would also be able to resize the screen. But let’s not reboot, yet. Instead, let’s first to add our user to the vboxsf group to enable file sharing between the virtual machine and PC or Mac:
Now we’re ready to shut down our virtual machine and set up a shared folder. This the shutdown command:
Step 6: Set up a shared folder
To set up a shared folder, right-click on your virtual machines name and select Settings…, or press Ctrl+S with your virtual machine selected.
From the menu that opens, select Shared Folders.
Click the button with the green plus sign that adds a new shared folder.
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From the Folder Path dropdown many, select Other… and then the folder you’d like to share. When you’re ready, click OK and check Auto-mount.
If you start your virtual machine again and launch the file manager, you should see your shared folder with the prefix “sf_” in the /media directory. Any file you put in that folder will also show up in the corresponding folder in/on your PC or Mac, and vice versa.
And that’s it! You now have Raspberry Pi Desktop running on a virtual machine on your PC or Mac, and you can easily use the clipboard and manage folders while you’re working on your next project.
Frequently Asked Questions
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How is Ludo different from RetroArch?
Ludo will stay smaller than RetroArch by only implementing the core features and by targeting less platforms.
By not adding advanced functionalities, we aim to deliver a stable frontend for beginner users on Windows, Mac OSX and Linux.
Some design choices are different. For examplem we support less cores, and choose cores for the user. The cores are packaged in the frontend so no additional step is required to launch a game.
By not adding advanced functionalities, we aim to deliver a stable frontend for beginner users on Windows, Mac OSX and Linux.
Some design choices are different. For examplem we support less cores, and choose cores for the user. The cores are packaged in the frontend so no additional step is required to launch a game.
How is Ludo similar to RetroArch?
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Like RetroArch, Ludo is a libretro frontend, so the way of communicating with the emulators is the same.
Same cores, similar UI patterns, joypad driven UI, same game thumbnails, mostly the same game database, same terminology. It also shares some of the same developers, as kivutar is an important contributor of the libretro team, and all the people who provided help have also been members of the Libretro community.
It definitely shares a lot of the same core values.
Same cores, similar UI patterns, joypad driven UI, same game thumbnails, mostly the same game database, same terminology. It also shares some of the same developers, as kivutar is an important contributor of the libretro team, and all the people who provided help have also been members of the Libretro community.
It definitely shares a lot of the same core values.
Why not implement Ludo as a menu driver in RetroArch?
To keep software stable on a number of different platforms, it is important to keep a small codebase with a good test coverage. It is also important to not introduce changes at a high rate.
RetroArch is an extremely active project and has a growing codebase that makes it harder to reach stability.
Also, RetroArch is a very powerful and sophisticated frontend, and one of the common criticisms is that it exposes too many configuration options for the average retro gamer.
Implementing Ludo as a menu driver of RetroArch would solve none of these core issues.For now, Ludo distinguishes itself from RetroArch by offering less features and focusing on a more easy to use interface.
RetroArch is an extremely active project and has a growing codebase that makes it harder to reach stability.
Also, RetroArch is a very powerful and sophisticated frontend, and one of the common criticisms is that it exposes too many configuration options for the average retro gamer.
Implementing Ludo as a menu driver of RetroArch would solve none of these core issues.For now, Ludo distinguishes itself from RetroArch by offering less features and focusing on a more easy to use interface.
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Does Ludo offer a better scanning method compared to RetroArch?
No, the scanner logic is basically the same and Ludo supports even less ROM formats.
CDs are scanned based on file name instead of serial number.
Ludo's scanner faster for this reason and because it leverages goroutines.
CDs are scanned based on file name instead of serial number.
Ludo's scanner faster for this reason and because it leverages goroutines.
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Can you add feature X to Ludo?
The answer is likely to be no, as we're trying to keep the code small, so only bugfixes are really welcome.
We encourage you to fork Ludo and add the feature yourself. It should be fairly easy given the scope of the project.
If you are able to author a very useful improvement with a minimum of changes, we might merge your changes.
We encourage you to fork Ludo and add the feature yourself. It should be fairly easy given the scope of the project.
If you are able to author a very useful improvement with a minimum of changes, we might merge your changes.