Nope. The only way to run GBA binaries is to have some sort of slot-2 device.
However, there is an alternative if you want to use a slot-1 device: if you have a DS Lite, you can get a slot-1 device and the slot-2 "EZ-Flash 3-in-1 expansion pack" which sits in slot-2 and lets you have GBA functionality. You store the GBA binaries on your slot-1 microSD card and use a program on the DS itself to flash a single file to the slot-2 expansion pack. You can only have one or two games on the pack at a time, but you can have as many on the microSD card as you want. It's a fairly cheap solution that gives you the best of both worlds.
Sorry, we can't answer this on DCemu.
Both will work equally well.
Most homebrew files will run fine on both slot-1 and slot-2 devices, so you usually don't see any homebrew that specifies what type of device to use it on. Older homebrew might work better on slot-2 devices though, but nearly all current homebrew will work fine on both. An example is NES DS - when used on a supported slot-2 device, you can load the .nes games directly off the card, while with a slot-1 device, you must package the NES games into the .nds file itself, and I'm not sure if saving support works then. DSLinux also works best with a slot-2 device with additional RAM it can use, though with the 3-in-1 expansion pack you do get some extra there, I think 8 MB at the moment.
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