Using a virtual development environment

Updated: Thu Apr 17 2025

I’ve been toying with VMs since at least 2014. Why?

• Compartmentalization. I love Windows and always have. YMMV. But trying to configure my bread-and-butter machine to work with things I wasn’t yet comfortable with added complexity and concern.
• Free! From the VM host VMWare Workstation to the operating system, the only thing it will cost you is some time (and disk space).
• Closer to the metal. Sure, you can run Linux in Windows with Windows Subsystem for Linux, but that’s command-line Linux server. This is far easier, allows separation — and has a GUI!
• Not MacOS. The only Apple product I’ve ever owned was an iPad 3 and I hated every minute of it.
• It is fast, and the environment is incredibly customizable. Most things you do in Windows just had a different name and a different UI.
• For the development and writing tasks I’ve had to do over this project, it just worked.
• Press Pause and you’re done for the day.

How to start with a VM

• Choosing a virtual machine (VM) host — I was surprised to learn VMWare Workstation performed far quicker than VirtualBox, which I used for years.

• Trying out “flavors” of Linux is fun — this is clearly an optional step if you have the time and inclination. As a long-time wannabe Linux user, I had to try different “distros” like Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and Fedora. Mint Cinnamon was the right one to “just work”. I bought a laptop and installed Mint on it, and it was incredibly painless; everything just worked.

Each VM and distro I tested were straightforward in terms of setup and had lots of handholding, as well as pretty good documentation.

Realistically, there is a steep learning curve to working with Linux. No matter what anyone tells you about desktop Linux environments, you still need to install and configure things by command line. Like a VPN. Or NodeJS. Or running an SSG server. Other than that, you rarely interact with the operating system anymore; your time is spent using apps that are generally cross-platform.

And then one day …

One day in mid-March I opened my VM to find I no longer had internet connectivity. My host computer had access, other VMs I was testing had connectivity, so something happened to just my working version. An hour or so searching and the answer was… well, I’m not 100% sure. Somehow the VM’s connectivity was changed in the overall settings, which I dnn’t recall doing. It’s possible that it broke from a major Linux update. Regardless, it was time lost trying to find the right magic commands.