[TriLUG] If you had to choose: Windows vs Mac for Linux graphical VM

[Alan Hinchliff via TriLUG]

I've used Linux, Mac, and Windows: and when I've been in the same situation
as you, I prefer Windows over Mac.

But my preference is for WSL (v2), so I'm not sure why you don't explicitly
state not that.

I think either Mac or Windows would be comparable for a full VM (possibly
depending on hardware architecture as previously commented).

But to me WSL is a better choice anyway. It's more lightweight, while
providing a real Linux terminal (lightweight VM). Your Firefox and other UI
programs would still run as native windows programs.

Windows 10 + WSL is my daily driver for work, while my personal machine is
Linux.

Put another way, Microsoft Windows is not a great window manager. But at
least I have a real Linux terminal "under the hood".


Alan

P.S. Saving the "hate" for below the cut, I personally can't stand
homebrew, and so generally dislike the Mac dev experience. A real Linux
environment is much better.



On Sat, Jan 3, 2026, 9:37 PM Ed Blackman via TriLUG <trilug at trilug.org>
wrote:

> My company is forcing me to give up my Linux development laptop for either
> a Windows 11 or Mac laptop.  I don't want to give up my Linux development
> environment, so I'm trying to figure out which would allow me to run a full
> screen Linux graphical desktop (presumably as a VM?) and ignore the
> underlying OS as much as possible.  But the last time I used Windows it was
> Windows 7, and I've never used a Mac, so I don't know what's possible
> currently.
>
> I'll need to use the underlying OS to turn my VPN on and off, and maybe a
> couple of other functions, but I'm explicitly not interested in switching
> to using WSL2 or the Mac shell environment within a mostly Windows or Mac
> environment.
>
> I don't do anything requiring a GPU: I run terminal vim to write Python
> and Go code and run Firefox.  If it matters, I'd strongly prefer to run
> Debian trixie with XFCE or LXQt.
>
> Please let me know if you do something similar and can tell me about
> Windows or Mac, especially if you have experience with both.
>
> --
> Ed Blackman
>
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