this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2024
13 points (100.0% liked)
Linux
48187 readers
1369 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
What games in specific do you want to play?
Mostly old Mario games, PS2 games and such. I'm just sick of setting up old consoles and figure a few emulators will fill the gap.
I haven't used these emulators before so I can't say if they will work but here are some options:
Nintendo: Mesen
PS2: PCSX2
Here's a site that gives you a list of emulators that you can use on Linux: https://www.ubuntupit.com/best-game-emulator-consoles-for-linux/
You should look up a guide on installing Emulation Station.
It has controller support, and will give you a visually appealing front-end to go through the consoles/games. It'll also let you scrape metadata like album art, game descriptions, year of release, blah blah blah.
Very good, that sounds like what I want. I'm considering having it set up to boot through the controller and then I want a clean UI to select games. Priority is on UI and speed though hopefully this will be the one.
I think Linux Mint is a great starting point in the Linux world. It aims to make things approachable without holding you back.
The emulators you mention should be available on Flathub (e.g., RetroArch, PCSX2, yuzu, ...). This means that you can easily install them on almost any distribution. In Linux Mint you can just use the built-in 'Software Manager' to install them.
Personally, I'd probably aim to have two separate machines for a server and a gaming box. For a NAS/home server you typically want a really low power consumption because they run 24/7. A gaming machine, on the other hand, will typically draw a lot of power (probably less so in your case), but that's ok because it doesn't run all the time. If the machine runs important stuff (e.g. your network, backups, email, ...), I'd also be a bit more hesitant to play around with it. That said, I think it should also be ok to run both on the same computer. You can always separate them later if you change your mind.
Thanks for your input, I appreciate it.
Would you have an example of low power figures? I bought a PC with enough power to transcode on Plex so I fear the low power may be gone out the window.
I'll buy an old Lenovo PC for the game so.
You're welcome :)
I think the metric that matters most for a home server is the idle power draw, because the system will be doing very little most of the time. A good idle power might be 5W to 20W for an x86 system. 20W is 175kWh per year, or about 50$ per year around here. A gaming PC might idle around 50W to 100W. Wolfgang's Channel has some good content regarding this.
If you're buying a used OEM PC, then you probably don't need to worry about that too much, though. They have to meet energy efficiency regulation and are generally already quite good. I would just avoid adding a high-end GPU and tons of RGB ;-)
I am operating without the built in GPU and absolutely no extravagant peripherals. Wired keyboard and mouse most likely.