I turned my old laptop into a retro gaming station with Batocera, and it's better (and worse) than I expected

A hands-on experience report of setting up Batocera Linux on an old laptop as a retro gaming station. The setup had friction points including HDMI output failures and a less-than-obvious installation path, but the ES-DE frontend boots directly into a console-like interface with Bluetooth controller support. Older hardware handles NES through N64 games well, with GameCube and Wii also running fine. The author concludes Batocera is appealing for plug-and-play simplicity but alternatives like RetroDeck may offer more flexibility for managing ROMs and display compatibility.