What’s the Best Linux VM Setup on Windows 11 for Easy Use?

Have you thought about using WSL? It offers proper GPU acceleration in a VM and lets you run GUI applications too, which might help with your graphics concerns. Lag tends to occur in VMs due to emulation issues, so WSL could smooth that out.

I installed VirtualBox on Mint and I didn't find it needed much tweaking at all. I just opened an app to see if it runs; everything seemed fine. What specific tweaks are you referring to? I'm curious if there are things I missed.

VMware is technically free for home use, but it's performing poorly on Windows 11 from what I've seen. Also, VirtualBox works decently. Hyper-V can be a headache, so it depends on what you want to achieve as a casual user. Have you considered using Docker? Given your hardware, dual-booting could be a good option if you're into gaming, but there's also the possibility of using a Linux QEMU/KVM while keeping Windows as your primary environment. For simplicity, I'd suggest sticking with VirtualBox for now.

There's a great resources page on Linux setups that might be helpful for you! Also, check out the suggestions on the community's search to find relevant discussions. Just remember to back up regularly and experiment in a VM. Start with the basics and you'll figure things out as you go.

On my Fedora setup with virt-manager (QEMU/KVM), I found the initial setup straightforward. Adding VMs with ISO files was a piece of cake, and accessing external storage was easy. In my experience, it’s surprisingly user-friendly compared to how it used to be.