Custom Firmware - A general term for community created and supported operating systems for retro handhelds. While not all of these are technically “firmware”, the term comes from an earlier time when the OS and firmware were the same thing for most handhelds.
EmulationStation (ES) - The frontend for AmberELEC. When you’re in the main menu, the options menu, or selecting a rom, you’re using EmulationStation.
Initialize/Initialization - After you’ve flashed AmberELEC to an SD card, the card still needs to be initialized before you can put roms on it. You initialize the card by putting it in your console and booting it up. It will take longer than normal to boot up, but once it does your card will be initialized.
Libretro - The collection of core libraries that RetroArch uses, as well as the API that it implements. A general name for the stuff that makes up RetroArch.
Port - A general term for standalone games that have been compiled or built to run on RG351s.
RetroArch (RA) - RetroArch is a program that collects a lot of emulators together as “cores”. AmberELEC runs most of its emulators through RetroArch.
Scrape - Fetching metadata and screenshots for your roms from a scraping server. This allows the system to display preview images for your games, as well as making Dynamic Collections (collections based on metadata like release date or developer) possible.
Standalone Emulator - An emulator that isn’t run through RetroArch.