Try Linux Mint: https://www.linuxmint.com/
this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2024
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This is what I was going to use for the server, as an entry distro it is supposed to be great and I'm very green.
But can I use it to do both the server and run retro games?
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/
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.
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.
Definitely not a good way to start this up and somewhat unrelated to your post, but it does worth it a lot in the end -- get yourself a single board computer called Orange pi zero 3, Install dietpi on it and then whatever emulators you want. The little thing is comically cheap and can run PS1 and under flawlessly plus any XCloud gaming you want. And its selling point -- its power draw does not go beyond the 3W mark. The downside is that its tricky to enable hardware acceleration on it, but theres guides on the internet about it. I could even spoonfeed you the whole process if you want.
t. Got an Orange pi zero 3 right on my left, replacing my previous rpi 4. With the exact same setup, but better performance.