I have a Windows box that I use pretty much only for gaming. I'll be working from home for the next year (sabbatical), so I plan to use this machine rather than my less powerful MacBook Pro.
Windows is not suitable for actual work, so in one week I plan to install Ubuntu (dual boot).
@rjsheperd I tried it a while back and found it insufficient. Windows programs can't see the Linux "side", so you'd need a complete set of Linux applications (desktop, web browser, IDE, etc.). Running Windows at the same time feels like it would be a waste of resources.
Am I wrong? My opinion isn't deeply informed.
@peterdrake I've gotten mixed results myself, but if all you're running w/ Linux is IDE, you can probably get away (especially on a gaming PC).
Here's how you can run GUI ontop of WSL: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/tutorials/gui-apps
And how you can access Linux FS from Windows: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/whats-new-for-wsl-in-windows-10-version-1903/
Ports are also shared between the VM and the host, so if you have a project running on port 8080 via WSL you can use your Windows browser to access on locahost:8080
I ended up ditching Windows on my gaming PC mostly b/c I stopped gaming, but wanted to use my NVIDIA Graphics card for doing GPU computing work 😝
Best of luck!
@rjsheperd I'm gonna be doing game development in Unity, which is a memory and CPU hog.
@peterdrake I am a big fan of dual boot setups. For me, Windows is basically a gaming platform with occasional utility in printing or editing Word/Excel/... documents. Linux provides a more professional development environment, and Windows doesn't come anywhere near close in that competition.
I generally have dual-boot Fedora/Windows, and have found, particularly with recent Fedora releases, the setup is pretty easy. I always install Windows first, then add Linux next. One tip: if you have at least two physical drives, it might be easier to put one OS on each rather than messing around with complicated disk-partitioning schemes.
Note: I haven't tried WSL, so I can't comment on the relative merits of that approach.
@aebrockwell Yes -- handily, I have a fast SSD (to boot up the Windows side quickly for gaming) and a larger actual hard disk (for long work sessions on the Linux side).
@peterdrake OOC, why not use WSL?