My tip: Ares. It’s a multi system emulator that is independent from retroarch/libretro while providing the same convenience and AFAIK is the most accurate n64 emulator available.

Its not even that much more convenient, truth be told. Yes, just double clicking to install a core is nice but you do that basically once per computer. Contrast that with downloading the emulator you like (most of which are installers on windows/mac and flatpak/appimages on linuxes) once per computer.

At which point.. just use ES-DE. It automagically detects the majority of standalone emulators and gives you a nice controller based GUI to pick what game you want to play and so forth.

The unified control layout is nice-ish but basically every modern gamepad is "close enough" to xinput that defaults work. And for the more obscure stuff... odds are you are looking more toward a mister anyway or it is that you actually have a god awful claw for the four n64 games worth playing.

Yes, there is a lot to be said about being able to just double click to install (and I think that most gui package managers provide flatpak integration these days? So that might actually be there?). But if you don't know how to install an application then you are going to have a bad time setting up retroarch/es-de in the first place and likely also difficulty totally ripping all your cartridges and yeah...

And, of course, the GOL article is written to make stenzek look like a jerk.

I like GOL as a blog a lot, but holy crap is Liam good at half-baked takes on nuanced subjects that mostly just rain shit down upon people.