RetroGaming

I'm going to go against what others are saying and advise against the raspberry pi. If you are serious about ps2, ps3 and gamecube, the pi will struggle with more games than it runs well. Especially for ps3, you'll want at least a 4c/8t CPU, preferably no more than 5 years old, anything less will struggle.

It's not a gaming specific OS, but ive been running Pop!_OS on my main PC for just about 3 years now with mostly successes. Steam runs great with proton and i use bottles for the rest of it (gog, battle.net, uplay, etc)

You literally just need a steamdeck. The EmuDeck software within it is made for exactly this and docking station it to your TV.

I second the folks who recommended a Raspberry Pi and RetroPi variant. For no frills, just-start-playing, it can't be beat.

Another option I haven't seen mentioned yet, is Ubunutu with Steam. Thanks to the rising popularity of the SteamDeck, lots of great games run perfectly, with no fuss, under Steam on Ubuntu.

But again, with your target including a lot of retro games, a RetroPi is the smooth path. Most of your PS2 games will work fine with some fiddling. Your PS3 experience will be more bound by the current state of PS3 emulation, than by the power of the Raspberry Pi (though you should certainly plan to get the biggest supported model, and get a big cooling kit and overclock it.)

I've played various PS2 games with relatively little fuss on an overclocked Pi3 with a cooling kit.

For PS3 era games, I would just make the leap to Ubutnu and then just buy any that are Steam Deck Verified, through the Steam store. Some won't be, but the ones that are should be a good time.

I, personally, don't have the life spare cycles to mess with emulating unverified PS3 era games. PS2 era was still very hit and miss last time I bothered for an arcade machine build. I'm sure it's doable, and might affect your hardware choice. Your best odds are probably Ubuntu, again - thanks to all the investment by Valve.

Ludo: https://ludo.libretro.com/

It’s similar to batocera in that it’s a minimalist UI front-end for emulators, but it’s a bit more modern and simpler to use. It can be used as an application (probably the recommended way), or installed as an operating system if you’re using something weak like a Raspberry Pi.

On my laptop I use nobara. It comes with some gaming specific tweaks to the kernel to make the experience a little easier.

I believe Batocera itself covers all the consoles you mentioned.

It's also got a pretty nice little UI (very customizable) and it has a really nifty feature where you can pair Bluetooth remotes super easy (basically just put the controller into pairing mode and click "pair Bluetooth controller" and it'll instantly pair).

It also runs like absolute lightning - I'm running my Batocera on a 2012 MacBook Pro and it still runs everything up to PS1 decent frames (which is an achievement for this laptop lol).

To top it off, adding the games is super easy. I just used a flash drive and put the ROMs into their respective folders in the file explorer and it just added the console's icon to the home screen.

I would go with Lakka. I have a Myoo Mini that runs RetroArch at its core and I have found RetroArch to be fantastic. Lakka is built on top of RetroArch and not just for Pi’s, but I think they are advertising it as “even for Pi’s”. The lighweight system will leave more horsepower for the emus.

Emudeck is a fancy setup script. It’s not an OS or a Front End. However, you could install SteamOS or Windows and use Emudeck to import roms into Steam. Steams big picture mode is fantastic and familiar.

Check out Retro Game Corps guide on how to do it in Windows.

For hardware here is RGC’s excellent easy spreadsheet for mini pc comparisons (speed/cost/what each can and can’t do).

Do you already have a PC for this? If you don't, I'd say get a pi and use retropie. Covers all the systems you mentioned.

Not specific to your use case, but use the distro you like. Then add an account for gaming and tailor that account's environment for running games.

I've tried a few distros now, and none have been so easy as Pop!_OS. I've switched back to Windows before, but not since this last time on Pop!_OS. It's just so simple to use out of the box, they like to use flatpaks (which I LOVE), and the UI is so clean and intuitive that it would be hard for me to go back for that reason alone. Automatic. Fucking. Window. Tiling.

In regards to gaming, System76 puts in so much work on their end to make Pop!_OS a gaming beast. They even have a separate download of their distro specifically tweaked for compatibility with Nvidia cards, which is huge! I love using the terminal, but the Pop! Shop app that they inclue is such an intuitive way to find new apps (that are curated, specifically for ease of use with the distro) and easily check if there's a flatpak version.

TL;DR Pop!_OS, hands down

I haven't used it for a while, but the last time I was using Lakka I don't think it had been ported to Pi yet. It worked great and was very much for PCs. I don't know about interfaces though; my install booted straight into RetroArch which isn't the slickest-looking thing but worked fine for me.

Make sure to check compatibility lists for the emulators you want to use. You may be surprised by how many games don't run/can't be finished/have major glitches on later systems like PS2, PS3, and GameCube. Also, there are no PS3 RetroArch cores, so you'll need to use the standalone version of RPCS3.

Garuda is literally designed as a gaming distro.

It has auto installers for retro and modern gaming (emulators, Steam, Gog, etc.)

Whatever is on the steam deck!

@timbuck2themoon I think Lakka (https://www.lakka.tv) might be a good option as it is the official distribution of RetroArch, though I haven't tried it myself yet.