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Hi, I'm one of the original backers of the Freeplay Zero and used whatever image was provided at the time the kit was delivered. It's been a few years now and Retropie has gone through a few versions. Is it possible to update the OS using the RetroPie setup menu? For other systems, this is allowed and just requires a patch to fix the output. Is that the case with the Freeplay Zero? Could I install or upgrade the base image and patch it? Any advice on keeping the underlying OS up to date or are stuck with the image from 2020?
Thank you.
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If you have an old enough RetroPie installation, then I think using their update system might be a problem.
I really don't know if it'll work well or get stuck at some point. I think that has gotten better in RetroPie, but I know that earlier releases (like what you may have if you were an original backer) had issues. RetroPie didn't even recommend using their updates for a while there.
If you can, I think it's best to pop out the SD card, make a backup, and then do whatever you're wanting to try.
Keep in mind that, if you do go through with updates, the joystick driver is likely to get "broken" along the way when you get a new kernel. This is fixable, but that's one of the pieces that has been tricky. Whatever you do, I'd recommend having a USB keyboard set up and maybe even use HDMI. It SHOULD not be difficult to rebuild the joystick driver for a new kernel, but this is one of the things that seems to break when people get a mismatch between the installed kernel and the installed kernel headers or kernel source (which is required to build the joystick driver). Sometimes it works out very easily.
