My ideal setup would be to run a really simple Linux desktop with no GUI on this workstation and fire up VM's for my guest machines but when I've tried to do this, I encounter too many issues with performance even on a really beefy system. Many of these performance issues seem to be perceived and not actually happening. I'm perceiving them because the screen reader I'm using is lagging just slightly behind me compared to standard use. This really well written article suggests ways around this but I'm not sure if I'm going to invest the time into researching it's suitability for my particular situation. https://blog.bryansmart.com/2012/02/16/low-latency-sound-for-vmware/ I use Windows 10 for everything from system administration, .net development, testing and audio editing. I want Linux at the core because when it's just running the console, it just works. I've never had a Linux system fail on me for software reasons when it's just running for this purpose. If I'm using virtual machines, I can easily create and restore from snapshots when needed. The workstation is a strong spec: 2 8 core Xeon processors: 64GB RAM A high speed SSD RAID Array system that I really don't understand. It's using 2 SSD disks enclosed in one case with a RAID controller. I've one 1TB SSD data disk Then another few 2TB data disks. Just for the fun of it, there's an Nvidia Geforce GTX970 graphics card Finally a Sound blaster ZXR DB Pro card I built this machine for the purpose of running VM's but for various reasons, it's never really been able to do it. Mainly because of screen reader issues.