I downloaded a lot of ROM’s on my desktop under windows and I’m looking to change to Linux for reasons. My questions is would I have to reinstall all those ROM’s if i change to Linux or will Linux just read the ROM’s? I have a 6TB hdd that is specifically for emulation so there is no OS on that drive.
ROMs are (more or less) just bit copies of the original media (the cartridges, CDs etc. that the games came on) and they are completely independent on the OS. You don’t really install them, you just put them in a location the OS can access and you use emulation software (Dolphin, Yuzu, Duckstation etc.) to load them and run them. So all you really need in your situation is to install Linux and the emulators and it should be pretty straightforward.