Have upgraded my PC but have an issue with the BIOS so dual booting into Windows/Linux would be a nightmare. I was having issues before since upgrading to a 4080 where I was getting a black screen when booting into Ubuntu. My new motherboard (with a 7950X3D) doesn't even show the boot up screens and I can't get into BIOS unless I plug in a HDMI cable. So I know it's not even worth the time or energy to try dual booting because I won't be able to access the GRUB menu to select OS. Right now the only solution is to either use HDMI all the time or swap between Displayport/HDMI every time I want to change OS. On HDMI I can't get 144hz which is the native refresh rate of my monitor. It's stuck at 60hz no matter what I do. Even if I could get 144hz then gsync wouldn't work so that's not happening. I need Displayport and that doesn't work with my BIOS/boot up.
I've been wanting to come back to Linux so it looks like my only option now is running a VM. I've tried Hyper-V (built into windows) and VirtualBox but it's awful. It's as if my graphics are running on my CPU instead of my GPU. There are lots of stuttering and display issues. VMware seems to be the only one that will make use of my GPU so it feels as close as possible to using a proper installation of Linux from my SSD and forgetting that Windows is running in the background.
I have upgraded to a 7950X3D which is a 16 core CPU. My previous CPU was a 9900K with 8 cores. So I guess I could run Windows on CCD 0 (8 cores) and a Linux VM on CCD1 (8 cores). I might need to use Process Lasso for it to work properly but that's cool.
I have also doubled my RAM from 32 to 64GB. I could allocate 16-32GB RAM to Linux and that'd leave me 32-48GB RAM for gaming if I wanted to game and leave a VM running. Most games don't use more than 8 cores or 32GB ram so my gaming performance shouldn't be affected much if at all compared to a system with something like a 7800X3D/32GB (high specs for a gaming PC)
Downloading VMware workstation player since it's free for personal use and an ISO of Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS. Will try set it up and see how it goes.
When I was using Linux before I really enjoyed it but went back to Windows. I'm not terribly excited about the future of Windows with all this AI bullshit they are stuffing in. I'm wanting to keep Windows for gaming and running exclusive programs only and do all my other stuff in Linux. Hopefully now I've upgraded my PC it will feel much better to virtualise Linux ontop of Windows. I want to be able to boot into Linux and forget that I'm running Windows. I can fall back to Windows when I need to play games or use a specific Windows only program. Also with a VM it's much quicker to switch between OS. Having to restart every time I want to switch between OS was a pain in the ass.