Well, for starting to dip the toe into Linux, from Microsoft Windows or macOS ...
On non-ancient Microsoft Windows, for ease of entry, I'd probably first point to Microsoft's WSL - as such is pretty conveniently available, and tightly integrates with Microsoft Windows, so it makes it quite easy to, e.g. move data back and forth, and generally access resources of one from the other. Been a while since I mucked about with WSL, but one thing I found (quite) annoying with it, though it's quite the Linux(-like) operating environment, it's not "really" a Linux operating system - at least not fully so - and not even a VM. So, if one is rather to quite used to Linux, and using and treating it as a system, and probably even more so administration thereof ... well, yeah, there's a lot of stuff one will bump into that just won't work, because it's not really and fully an installed running Linux operating system, nor even such in a VM. But "other than that", yeah, sure, mostly seems to work quite well, and hard to beat for easily available on (non-ancient) Microsoft Windows and good tight integration.
Next I might suggest Oracle's VirtualBox. And, it has its advantages and disadvantages. There is of course the whole Oracle is evil thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=1980s etc., but some of the other disadvantages, over the years, Oracle has made it increasingly difficult to do more custom installations of Linux. Still quite possible, but in more recent years, VirtualBox wants to be "smart" and "help", by recognizing many Linux ISOs, and for those it recognizes, essentially to large extent taking over and automating/controlling the installation, making it much more difficult to have access to the more typical means by which Linux would generally be installed from ISO, and accessing its menus and options and installation dialogs and such - and instead VirtualBox just gives one its choices, and hides all those other details from one. Anyway, is still (at least last I checked) possible to do the more customary VM install, quite as if one were simply booting the ISO, and installing from what it offers, and with its menus and dialogs, etc., but VirtualBox just makes it increasingly difficult to manage to do such an install. Anyway, those are the among the most frustrating bits I find with VirtualBox ... though last I actually did an install from it was likely year or more ago - and has been about half a year since I've used VirtualBox - but I've often heavily used it, notably in $work environments, on macOS and/or Microsoft Windows. And, it does have the advantages that it is a full VM, unlike, e.g. WSL (or Cygwin, or Homebrew). It also has good integration with Microsoft Windows / macOS (notably filesystem access, etc.), but not as tightly integrated as WSL.
What I may quite suggest though (alas, haven't yet done so myself, but if I were about to do a fresh installation to Microsoft Windows or macOS, probably where I'd start), although significantly more complex to set up, would be Homebrew, and with/from that, qemu/kvm, libvirt and friends, etc. I think that gives a significantly better VM platform, though it's fair bit more fiddly bits to get that all set up and nicely working, and also bit more work to do, e.g. filesystem integration bits. But once all in place, probably well worth it. Yes, one of my work peers had gone that direction, and the results were most excellent. So, though I've not yet done that myself, I'd think the results and capabilities would be very much like where I've done quite similar where the host OS is Linux ... but not with Homebrew in there, but including all the other relevant bits, e.g. qemu/kvm, and libvirt and friends. I've not added tight filesystem integration between VMs and the physical host OS with that though, with or without Homebrew ... - I've not yet had/felt compelling need ... but were I doing it on Microsoft Windows or macOS, or otherwise needed to more directly share lots of files between VM and physical host, then I'd probably take the additional steps to set that up.
Other worthy of mention bits ...
Dual boot - once upon a time, that was generally what folks were pointed at, and most Linux distros make installing that way pretty easy. The big downsides with that, though, it's more complex than doing, e.g. WSL or VirtualBox to have installed and up and running, and probably more importantly, with dual boot - one only runs one OS at at time. And with that, most folks typically end up spending most all their time just running one, and not doing much with the other ... and most of the time that means not doing much with Linux and often effectively giving up on it relatively early on. But there still are some circumstances where I'd recommend dual boot. E.g. if one is transitioning, notably to entirely switch away from whatever the other OS is, or is on that particular physical host, then dual boot is best way to be sure one knows exactly how it will behave on that particular hardware, get any associated kinks worked out, etc. So, e.g., when I fist ran Linux in 1989, yeah, I was doing dual boot ... Linux first on floppies, then dual boot on the hard drive (and may have still required a boot floppy for the way I was set up), and finally completing my migration from UNIX to Linux. And back then, VM was totally infeasible if not for all intents and purposes impossible, for the hardware and its resources I was using at the time. So, sometimes dual boot is the answer, but these days, most of the time it's not the answer / best fit.
There's also Homebrew itself - not Linux, but can provide much of a *nix-like environment on, e.g. Microsoft Windows or MacOS.
For X11 on MacOS, I found XQuartz to work highly well.
For X11 on Microsoft Windows, been years since I did it, but I found Cygwin/X worked quite well.
And, somewhat similar to Homebrew, for Microsoft Windows, there's Cygwin, though been years since I ran Cygwin on Microsoft Windows, so not sure how it's comparing capability-wise and such to Homebrew these days (in fact I've not run Homebrew on Microsoft Windows, but have generally heard quite good things from those that have).
From other platforms, e.g. the BSDs, what options are (feasibly) available may be bit different. Of course dual boot is a possibility, some VM technologies may well work, and there may be some other possibilities too - of the various bits mentioned, not sure which may be available to the BSDs.
Oh, another worthy of mention - VMware - they may have different possibilities available for various platforms, but licensing and/or cost may be an issue, depending upon environment, what they do/don't currently offer (and notably what for free and under what terms), etc., and what they do offer, may be subject to change (with ownership change in recent years, that's been a bit more bumpy ... but hopefully that's more settling/settled out at this point). Anyway, I haven't run such in some fair number of years now - don't know if they even offer software for running on macOS. Anyway, it has been a good option in past, not sure about most current.
And, I may be missing some bits, but I think those are at least most that come up in conversations, etc., regarding various relevant possibilities.
On Sun, Mar 23, 2025 at 12:26 PM aaronco thirtysix via BALUG-Talk balug-talk@lists.balug.org wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: aaronco36@sdf.org To: balug-talk@lists.balug.org Cc: Bcc: Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2025 19:26:06 -0000 Subject: [BALUG-Talk] Linux w/in MS-Windows... great chat! extended Quoted snippet of Darrion Burgess from BALUG-Talk thread https://lists.balug.org/mailman3/hyperkitty/list/balug-talk@lists.balug.org/... :
to start, the easiest way to ease into is using the windows subsystem for linux (WSL) so you can try out different distributions using the windows terminal.
Its even sophisticated enough to have a wayland compositor at this point so you can even run GUI apps from the linux containers.
Besides WSL, another good(IMHO) means of more easily running Linux distros w/in MS-Windows is to use Oracle VirtualBox Quoting its main site https://www.virtualbox.org/ :
VirtualBox is a general-purpose full virtualization software for x86_64 hardware (with version 7.1 additionally for macOS/Arm), targeted at laptop, desktop, server and embedded use.The VirtualBox 7.1.6 platform packages dwonloads for Windows and other OS hosts can be found at https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
Am concurrently attending both the in-person and Jit.si Meet virtual meetups of the Berkeley Linux Users Group https://berkeleylug.com/ -- and am using VirtualBox for Debian GNU/Linux 12.x 'Bookworm' as hosting OS on a second laptop. VBox works great and is more [ful]filling! :-D
-A
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: aaronco thirtysix via BALUG-Talk balug-talk@lists.balug.org To: balug-talk@lists.balug.org Cc: Bcc: Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2025 19:26:06 -0000 Subject: [BALUG-Talk] Linux w/in MS-Windows... great chat! extended _______________________________________________ list: BALUG-Talk@lists.balug.org help: https://lists.balug.org/help/ unsubscribe email: balug-talk-unsubscribe@lists.balug.org