Confused but with outdated knowledge, need to double check my thought process.

[Dayisnear]

Hey all,

Am seminew to Linux (did play around in my twenties with Ubuntu, but that was a "couple of years (coughcough)" ago .

I do however plan on creating a bootable (from a 64gb usb stick that I had laying in my drawers and that works well enough.) usb flash drive for when I do want to play around with Linux again. I ain't worried about fiddling around in cmd and such. I do feel the need to double check what system may be the better option for my current hardware setup. I do have win 10 home as a main software setup. To that it's AMD based, Nvidia 3070 TI 8 gb vRAM (Low I know, but works with a lot of games anyway as I generally go for the not so heavy games...ehm, exception there is ARK but that works somewhat too with some fiddling and shoooort sessions due low memory ). I also do have 16 gb of RAM and the urge to emulate some of my older games that does tend to Linux as well (or used to at least ).

So...with that in mind, with a Linux that I'll be booting from the 64gb and mainly be running old school games on such stick.
Might actually in the future change this up to dedicate one of my drivers to Linux storage, depending on how much I actually use this system.
I am still looking around and am reading up on things, so do please bare with me if I run around in a confused manerism. I do know that I probably will not use Bazzite yet, but am most likely gonna see if my setup can handle Proton and such. as mentioned, will use it for mainly retro (outch, agefeels) games for the nostalgia.

Best regards Dayisnear

 

[KGIII]

That'll work. You're going to want to make it persistent.

But when I say it will work, it depends on what you plan on doing. From what I've seen, all the good emulators are available as Flatpaks. That seems to be how they're all distributed.

If it's not persistent, you'll have to install the Flatpak software and then the Flatpak emulator software every time you reboot the machine. That might be something you want, but it can be a pain.

If it was my decision, I'd just pick a popular distro (making support easier) to install the traditional way. That'll make it easier, instead of needing to go through the whole installation process all over again. I'm not 100% sure that Flatpaks can be made peristent as I've never tried it.

https://flathub.org/en/apps/search?q=emulator

 

[Brickwizard]

Your GPU is only 4 years old and was built for gaming, so should not be a problem for light gaming

Recommended Gaming Resolutions:​

1920x1080 2560x1440 3840x2160

 

[theLegionWithin]

i moved off of windows last year (due to hating win11 and win10's "death date" is 10/14/25) - initially I went with a debian based distro, MX linux, but then decided to replace my main rig this year with a mini desktop (NucBox K8 Plus)
and went amd instead of intel/nvidia and also switched over to Arch linux (mainly due to Arch's excellent documentation).

I dont do any heavy gaming anymore - no AAA titles - but I've never had any issues with any games I do want to run - on either my old rig or the new hardware. basically all of the popular distros are going to get you to the same place, though there are some gaming focused distros out there as well.

good luck!