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Our development department is discussing if in the future we should develop on physical machines with Linux based OS or on a Linux based VM (edit: the VM is hosted on a server) from our Windows machines.(which we need for other things for our job that has to use Windows). The app we develop and support has dependencies on Linux.The department is very divided about what to choose, where I stands in the middle mostly because my lack of experience. So which method do you think is the way to go and why?

We already have a few discussion points for both:

Points for physical machine with Linux:

  • fastest way to get everyone coding.
  • no internet connection needed.
  • no performance loss.
  • no Windows based error risks.
  • you can choose to dual-boot, so cost effective.

Points for VM with Linux:

  • on 1 machine (Windows) you can have both environments.
  • can reach from every workstation
  • our IT standard is windows based so it is manageable for IT dep(no Linux knowledge).
  • Data is more secure because no local data?
Gerald Schneider
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Foxdemon
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1 Answers1

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Whatever you want, this is mostly personal preference.

Most of your assertions of pros and cons do not follow from bare metal vs. VM; those are flawed assumptions. Both Linux and Windows can work effectively in bare metal, virtual machine, or container environments. If managed properly.

Usually, laptops and workstations are on the easiest to manage platform that runs most of your internal applications. If your organization's policies are deployed via the AD domain, standard issue Windows laptops and Linux application servers/VMs/containers makes sense.

John Mahowald
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