I tried a couple of times to make https://www.reddit.com/r/cuttingedgegaming/ happen, but never reached many people. This community seems to mostly folks playing 1-2 year old games, I wonder if there are more of us who are playing older (but not “retro”) games, particularly PC games?
If you get the “network adapter” accessory, you can install an HDD in the fat PS2. Then after setting up the bootloader and apps, you can play your games directly from the HDD.