I just got an i7 8500 I was hoping to use to run my network and server (which I haven’t built yet) and I was wondering if it could also be used to run some retro game on and if that would be advisable?
Is it advisable to use dedicated machines for both activities?
If I can use the one machine for both, what distros would you advise?
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.