> Also expect learning new things and spending several evenings trying. Compared to hackintosh, installing Linux on random hardware is a walk in the park.

I've been a Hackintosh user for the past decade.

I've not done it yet, but the next time I need to do a brand new Hackintosh setup, I'm planning on using ESXI. It seems perfect—you're getting very little performance loss in exchange for a setup which is (kind of) officially supported by Apple.

Maybe when I actually do it, I'll discover some terrible downside, but it seems incredibly appealing.

I did my first hackintosh few days ago just for the learning experience, I have normal Macs otherwise. It does have a problem with flickering screen; I suspect it is due to 10-bits per pixel that I cannot switch from and the cheap HDMI2 cable used.

Wrt ESXI - are you aware, that with ESXI you will lose local console (and all the GPU-goodness)? After ESXI boots, it has only text-mode notice, how to connect remotely and that's it. You will be stuck with remote access. For things like build machine or test-runner, that's fine, but if you want to run something interactive... well, let us know about the experience ;)

I'm pretty sure I can do GPU passthrough? https://blogs.vmware.com/apps/2018/09/using-gpus-with-virtua...

Yeah, that's an option, too.