Linux desktop distro and windows vm.

[it_dont_work]

I've been looking at switching to a linux distro for my main os for sometime now, and using hardware pass through for gaming. How good is the general info to get started and what distro would you guys recommend, generally I'd just use ubuntu when in need of an os quickly but I've never stuffed around with vm's much and could use a recommendation. 

 

Or if I should just not bother and dual boot, vm passthrough is mainly just because I'd like something new to tinker with.

[SCHISCHKA]

debian wiki was enough for me to set it up

https://wiki.debian.org/VGAPassthrough

you will have to ask google if your hardware can do it

dual booting is easier

one cool thing about a vm is you dont have to reboot to take a filesystem snapshot and you can move vm easily to a new system

use ubuntu 16.04 LTS, if you need a reason; shut up and get on with it

[it_dont_work]

17 minutes ago, SCHISCHKA said:

shut up and get on with it

Well that's good enough for me, also hardware is capable. Virtual box work fine for this purpose?

[SCHISCHKA]

50 minutes ago, it_dont_work said:

Well that's good enough for me, also hardware is capable. Virtual box work fine for this purpose?

na qemu or xen are faster. qemu is the easiest to use

[it_dont_work]

15 hours ago, SCHISCHKA said:

qemu is the easiest to use

Guess I'll give qemu a go after I get my nas up and running, it's spent 10 hours now copying video to the dam thing. 

[AustinJ]

@it_dont_work I have personally have been running gpu passthrough for probably 2-3 years now and I have set it up on Arch and Void Linux. There is this guide here https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PCI_passthrough_via_OVMF. But personally if you have an nvidia card and an amd card it makes matters easier just blacklist one of the vendors drivers from loading and add it to the vm. I use virt-manager to make life easier. Now if you want to make it so it is a user vm and not a root vm there is where you have to do all your fancy shit.