Can anyone recommend me a setup to virtualize Linux under Windows that runs smoothly? - eviltoast

I by now have wasted far too much time trying to setup a VM on my decently decked out machine (i5 13600KF, RTX 3080, 32GB DDR5, Win11 on a 4K Display) to run some kind of Linux in there that runs perfectly smooth - mostly for Development purposes.

So far I have tried all 3 major vm hosting softwares for windows (VMWare, Hyper V and Virtual Box) along side various (admittedly beginner friendly) distros (Ubuntu, Debian, SUSE, Mint, …) yet I have not once gotten a System up and running with smooth animations and no notable input latency. Also I have of course turned on Hardware virtualization in my bios and benchmarks usually show that CPU performance seems to be where I expect it.

So I wanna ask the community what setup they are using under windows that just runs any kind of Linux smoothly and what point I may be missing.

Also installing Linux natively is not really an option for me since I want to be able to run Multiplayer games and I still consider myself a Linux beginner and don’t wanna commit to install Linux directly on my host machine yet.

  • Dudewitbow@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    An alternative choice is having an external drive formatted for Linux, and setting up the bios to boot to linux if the drive is plugged in. Doesnt require any modifications to the windows drive, and allows you to run Linux natively when you need to.

    • NathanUp@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      This. There really is no perfect solution for VMs; I went from a VM to dual booting to full time Linux with a Windows VM that I never even touch anymore. Ironically, Linux VMs work very smoothly on Linux hosts due to opengl support.