Can anyone recommend me a setup to virtualize Linux under Windows that runs smoothly?
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.
In VirtualBox, did you turn on 3D acceleration and turned up the video memory? Just an idea. Also VirtualBox 7.0 has issues with graphics currently, maybe you could try 6.1. Also make sure there's enough RAM.
Yes I did turn 3D acceleration on, but I'm indeed running 7.0. I will try downgrading it to 6.1.. Thanks.
Also turn off Hyper-V if using Virtual box. If you check out the documentation there's some warnings about possible poor performance when Hyper-V is enabled.
VirtualBox is best, it works actually pretty well.
Also consider wsl, it's absolutely not linux, but it might handle your minimal use case.
WSL2 is actually Linux.
Linux userspace on nt kernel (with Linux/posix personality enabled).
That's WSL1. WSL2 is Linux.
You are correct, it's a vm, my bad.