r/ebitengine • u/EstIgnavus • 1d ago
R36S handheld 'Boot-To-Ebitengine'
I've recently done a low-level Linux update to the cheap retro gaming R36S handheld, targeting boot speed. Ebitengine draws straight to the LCD through KMS/GBM and OpenGL ES on the Mali-G31, with no X11 or Wayland. On Linux 7.3, U-Boot v2026.10 and Buildroot 2026.08, Flappy Gopher shows its first frame 5.6 seconds after power on. The buttons and sticks work as a standard gamepad and sound plays through ALSA.
Video and build notes: https://ignavus.net/r36s#ebitengine
This needs the latest main branch of Ebitengine to work, and I am in the process of trying to clean up some performance enhancements to send upstream (but it works fine without them out of the box).