What’s the best Azure setup for Windows and Linux developers?

The choice depends heavily on the usage pattern. If developers use standardized images and their sessions are interchangeable, pooled or shared hosts may reduce costs and scale more efficiently than dedicated machines. If they work sporadically, start/stop scheduling can help; if they’re online continuously, the economics change. It’s worth piloting pooled, personal, and possibly multi-session options with representative workloads before deciding.

Windows 365 is simpler and gives you a more predictable recurring cost, while AVD provides more control over host sizing, power management, and the overall environment. For demanding developers, I’d favor AVD unless operational simplicity is more important than flexibility. Also plan profile storage early—large developer profiles and caches can become painful if they aren’t designed separately from the host.

Personal AVD is a reasonable starting point for heavy Windows workloads, especially when developers need different VM sizes or when you want to shut machines down outside working hours. Before committing, test with a genuinely difficult repository: measure clean build times, incremental builds, IDE indexing, and storage/cache performance. The disk and cache design may matter more than simply choosing a larger VM.

For Linux development, native Ubuntu VMs accessed through SSH or VS Code Remote would be my default. That keeps the toolchain close to the target environment and avoids adding another virtualization layer. WSL2 on an AVD desktop can work well for developers who need Windows applications, but it introduces extra patching and troubleshooting. I’d reserve it for people with a genuine Windows dependency rather than making it the standard Linux platform.