I am aware of how emulation works, but I have never tried it out before. So I have some questions about it.
1 What is a good program for eemulation on linux?
2 How can I cheaply and legally come up with a decent amount of older games for this?
3 What are some good titles I shoukd consider with this?
Out of order:
You could buy a physical game cartridge (from ebay, yard sales, dumpster), then download the rom from the internet, if that gives you a clear conscience. If you're worried about getting into trouble for downloading…don't worry about it unless it's under ~10 years old. If you're insane you can dump the rom chips. Romsets exist, which are all commercial releases for a given system. Don't ask people where to find roms because we might get in trouble for that.
On Windows there are a bunch of standalone emulator programs, each of which work slightly differently, has different options, etc. There's BizHawk, which takes several emulators and puts them under one windows-style frontend. For Linux, though, look into RetroArch. Every worthwhile console emulator has been brought into the cross-platform Libretro fold (dolphin wip), and the shaders are really pretty. It runs on everything, not just Linux (Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS, PSP, Gamecube, PowerPC mac). Prepare for config file madness though.
you can output to a CRT monitor over VGA at an ultrawide resolution and use a shader to change the color space and everything it's so pretty
If you never owned an old game console, and nobody's ever recommended an old game to you, and you've never seen or heard of an old game that looked interesting…just google it?
So do to my child hood I would want to emulate game cube, and ps2. I will eventually want to emulate other things to I am sure. I will look on ebay. The third question is more just me looking for suggestions for things to try I already have a couple of things I know I want to emulate.
dolphin for gamecube and pcsx2 for PS2.
The Super Nintendo (SNES) is a goldmine for classic games. Yoshi's Island, Super Metroid, Earthbound, etc. NES games have a tendency to be extremely difficult, so as to extend their playtime without having much cartridge space to spare, but it's still a worthwhile library. The Genesis competed with the SNES, not quite as many enduring titles though. Sonic and Gunstar Heroes are still good though. I've never been into N64 emulation—the emulators always seemed glitchy and the controller is hard to map to a standard 360-style pad—but if it's working for you, play anything made by Rare. Everyone loves Ocarina of Time but I never liked it, despite several attempts. The PS1 came out at the same time, and has a great library (Spyro, Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, others)
For CD-based games, you may actually be able to rip them from disc. Should work for the PS1, not sure about the PS2 (Wikipedia says CD/DVD media so there's a chance). There's a faint chance that your disk drive may take gamecube discs but I wouldn't count on it. Also, RetroArch sadly does not yet support PCSX2, nor any other PS2 emulator, so you'll have to figure that out on your own.
For gamecube emulation, I myself use a softmodded Wii. It's mainly because I'm a CRT junkie, and it's the best way to output to one (component video cables are cheap). Retroarch Wii can be used for CRT output for retro games as well, but several cores don't run at full speed consistently and the UI needs work. If you prefer display technologies from the last decade, though, Dolphin (PCSX2 also) lets you render at higher resolutions and gives you other graphical tweaks. It looks great on 3D stuff but bitmap sprites or text can end up looking "painted on", since they can only be upscaled.
What do you want to emulate? What type of console or device?
Legally? Buy them second-hand, but honestly, no one does that.
Good titles? What retro games do you want to play again? I personally loved the Earthbound series, which was on NES / SNES and GBA.
Side note: If you want Gamecube or Wii games to be emulated, Dolphin is the best around, unlike other emulators, most GC and Wii emulators fall short except this one. https://dolphin-emu.org/
retroarch might be the best bet if your looking for doing multiple systems, runs on everything.
a youtuber I like called simply austin is very into his emulation and is what his channel is about.
The question is why linux is the best option for emulation. In my view the emulation option on linux is limitless and it is very easier to install the linux system.