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)

  • 9point6@lemmy.world
    4·
    1 day ago

    Can’t comment on everything, but given you mentioned audio production: a couple of years ago I tried to get ASIO working from within a VM on a Linux host OS and wasn’t having a whole lot of luck.

    I think I read somewhere that someone had come up with a special ASIO driver to send the audio directly into the host Linux OS audio subsystem, but I’ve not tried that or measured latency yet.

    • afk_strats@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      23 hours ago

      I hadnt considered this. I was thinking that if I passed an audio device directly to the guest OS, I would bypass ASIO headaches. I now realize thats naïve of me.

      • 9point6@lemmy.world
        1·
        23 hours ago

        By all means try it out, it might have been something down to the drivers for my audio interface (focusrite scarlett) at the time

        If you have better luck than I did, I’d love to know!