Not seeing the point of this, all that much. I'd rather run something like Mobian or pmOS (given the tiny, mobile-like screen on most of these devices) once the hardware support on mainline kernel is up to proper standards. A lightweight environment like sxmo would probably work quite well with the custom HID controls. And it would open up this whole emerging class of low-cost devices for doing a whole lot more than just the emulator-based "gaming" that they're used for out-of-the-box.
(Not all of them are low-cost, either; there's plenty of high-end handhelds with physical buttons and analog controls these days, that could probably be usefully repurposed for productive work.)
The whole point of my retro handhelds are to be an escape from this kind of complexity. I just want to sit down without any connection to the wider world and jump into some simple games like I did in my childhood. No distractions. They're for the times I want to escape 'productive work' for awhile.
Does Mobian work without a touch screen? Most of the kinds of devices Rocknix supports don't have one. Rocknix has a nice emulator front end out of the box, a media player, etc. and it all works with the game pad controls.
The Linux-on-mobile community is already exploring viable input methods for low-end devices with non-touch screens. Much of this effort can also be shared with the work involving TV-remote or gamepad-driven interfaces for the "media center" or "game console" use cases. Since Mobian is ultimately intended to just be a lightweight overlay over Debian, all of this work can easily benefit future versions of Mobian.
Bazzite was built as a "plug and play" distro to play games on steam, I think their main handheld target is the Steam Deck which has a 7.4 inches display
