TLDR; tell me if this is a waste of time before I spend forever tinkering on something that will always be janky
I want to run multiple OSs on one machine including Linux, Windows, and maybe OSX from a host with multiple GPUs + igpu. I know there are multiple solutions but I'm looking for advice, opinions and experience. I know I can google how-to but is this worh pursuing?
I currently dual boot Bazzite and Ubuntu, for gaming and develoent respectively. I love Bazzite ease of updates and Ubuntu is where it's at for testing and building frontier AI/ML tools.
What if I kept my computer running a thin hypervisor 24/7 and switched VMs based on my working context? I could pass through hardware as needed.
Proxmox? XCP-NG? Debian + QEMU? Anyone living with these as their computing machines (not homelabs/server hosts)?
This is inspired by Chris Tidus's (YouTube) setup on arch but 1) i don't know arch 2) I have a fairly beefy i7 265k 192gb build, but he's on an enterprise xenon ddr5 build so in a differenrent power class 3) I have a heterogenous mix of graphics cards I'm hoping to pass though depending on workload
Use cases:
- Bazzite + 1 gpu for gaming
- Ubuntu + 1 or more GPUs for work
- Windows + 0 or more GPU Music Production paid vstis and kernel-level anti cheat games (GTAV, etc)
- OSX? Lightroom? GPU?
Edit: Thank you all for your thoughts and contributions
Edit: what I've learned
- this is viable but might be a pain
- a Windows VM for getting around anti-cheat in vames defeats the purpose. I'd need a dual boot for that use case
- hyperV is a no. Qubes Qemu libvirt, yes
- may want to just put everything on sparate disks and boot / VM into them as needed
Edit: distrobox/docker works great but doesn't fit all my needs because I can't install kernel-level modules in them (AFAIK)
I've read through the thread and your edit sounds like the best option for me. It gives direct hardware access and gets everything working right away but allows me to try out a hypervisor solution.
I love and use containers/Distrobox all the time and it all works great except that I do run into problems with firmware and kernel modules because you can't containerize that or I haven't figured it out yet.
So one thing I've done when I needed a physical drive OS but also wanted it to be referenceable from another OS is to make a direct reference virtual machine in VirtualBox. Your mileage may vary, and you take a chance on data loss, of course. But I've done this successfully several times. Here's a link, but also look at the VB docs carefully to see the setup you want. It runs fast, too.
https://superuser.com/questions/495025/use-physical-harddisk-in-virtual-box