Re:Ask HN: What's the best virtual Linux desktop experience ...
by darkteflon on Friday January 23, 2026 @06:55PM
(#46739581)
That’s super helpful, thanks! I’ll look into that - both UTM config and stock Debian.
It seems that it depends on the distro though - I couldn’t get it working on any of the distros I mentioned above, although admittedly this stuff is not my strong suit; rather than spend lots of time figuring out the ins and outs of each distro I was kind of hoping that commenters would help surface the best options for this setup generally, from which it would then make sense to dig more deeply. Or alternatively, get a steer on which distros to avoid.
One of the commenters below helpfully mentioned NixOS - it’s been great - GPU acceleration working out of the box. Good contender at the moment.
It seems that it depends on the distro though - I couldn’t get it working on any of the distros I mentioned above, although admittedly this stuff is not my strong suit; rather than spend lots of time figuring out the ins and outs of each distro I was kind of hoping that commenters would help surface the best options for this setup generally, from which it would then make sense to dig more deeply. Or alternatively, get a steer on which distros to avoid.
One of the commenters below helpfully mentioned NixOS - it’s been great - GPU acceleration working out of the box. Good contender at the moment.