What I found was that the asset locations, cores, and core information are in the global system, but when I try to update these things, retroarch never asks me for the system password. So I assumed that the files weren't updated.
I solved the problem by changes all the locations of contents that retroarch stores in the global system to locations in the user scope like '~/.local/share' and '~/.local/lib' in the Directory settings
]]>Check the note in the colored box at the end RetroArch configuration section
]]>core_updater_show_experimental_true = "true"
Please update that as a standard installation config option.
]]>I have enabled the Core Updater through the config file and gone to install some cores directly through retroarch.
It shows a gear icon with "No Entries to Display"
I have installed retroarch on android and the cores are all there, so it's definitely something wrong with my setup.
I have changed the DNS servers to google as was suggested by another retro user, also I don't have a firewall up or a VPN.
]]>