Okay, I tried searching to see if this had already been answered and did not have any luck. I am looking to use my work computer (Windows 10) to test out some different distros and figure out which one would work best for me. I am looking to setup a VM on the computer in order to do this and am looking to find the "least intrusive" VM so that it doesn't change too much on my work laptop. Do VMs have varying degrees of changes that are made to the system hosting it? I have used Ubuntu in the past and all I really know is that I want to try out more distros this time around and safely test them on a work computer that needs to remain running Windows 10. Thank you for your time and any feedback will also be greatly appreciated!!

Not sure if your work laptop is as locked down as mine: I cannot install anything on mine. As for "least intrusive", not sure; there are only 2 virtualization software products I know of: Oracle VirtualBox and VMWare. Windows applications will install software and write registry entries so if you are worried about your employer finding out VM software is installed, my guess is they can.

Least intrusive to me is running live thumb drives of Linux. No install, they don't install anything and just require a reboot.

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I do have the permission and IT won't give me a hard time for trying it out, I just don't want the VM to hinder my ability to work on the computer and chew up too many resources. Thanks for the quick response!

Don't use your work computer for your hobby. Your employer won't appreciate that and you won't want to give your employer access to personal information.

There are plenty of inexpensive computers to be had...
Ed

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Yeah, I am a big VMWare hater since they used to steal from FOSS so I use VirtualBox on my personal machine. Not that I like Oracle either but to me it's the lesser of 2 evils I guess. I don't know which is less intrusive in terms of resources. The only windows 10 box I have is for gaming only so I can't speak to how either piece of software does on Windows. Interestingly enough I run Kali in VirtualBox on a VMware hosted Windows system (nested!) as my attack space. I have zero performance issues but the VMware instance is ESXi and is on an enterprise level host with a ton of ram. My jump box has 32GB as a guest.

This is not really helping, more me rambling, sorry

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Appreciate the advice, but my employer won't mind at all and I am just looking for the most efficient way to do it.

I don't mind rambling at all and thanks for further input. I think I may try VirtualBox to start and if I decide to try multiple VMs then I can do that. Really it's not a critical issue, I just figured it would be best to ask since I haven't needed or used a VM before as I usually had either a Linux-only box or would dual-boot.

AFAIK software only chews up resources when it runs. This is true for e.g. virtualbox on my machine.
Things might be different on Windows 10 though...
Now actually running a virtual operating system inside your VM software, that might chew up quite some resources. But you can always shut it down.

Windows 10 pro and enterprise have Hyper-v. It's also possible to use Virtual PC.

Most folks here may be most familiar with Virtualbox.

Any VM will consume at some point all the resources you assign. In some cases you can over provision things like ram.

Modern VM's are able to do quite well at managing resources. You can limit the VM to Processors and such to assist in leaving resources for the host.

Do a perfmon on host now to see what you have free.

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Good point, I guess I could have worded it better but I was just wondering if anyone has noticed a difference between VMs that would make them choose one over the others to conserve storage, etc.

Does virtualBox have any features that Hyper-V does not? I hadn't even heard of Hyper-V so the fact that I already have that on this machine is pretty cool. Any advantages to using one over the other?

I've not used Hyper V, but I've read that it is optimised for Windows guests. This may not make it the best choice for testing Linux. Unfortunately, it doesn't run on Linux hosts, so it's out of the question for me.

VB is cross platform, and makes a great base for testing Linuxes.

The least intrusive VM is one you don't install at all...

https://distrotest.net

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Windows is slowing introducing Linux to run within windows. The windows subsystem for linux has been slowly improved over the years. It may be possible to install linux from the windows store or powershell. That would use hyper-v. Hyper-v is not an easy solution unless you use microsoft's manager.

I guess one could search websites for latest metrics on every VM but I'd say that the more your host system is built to take advantage of a VM the more closely it will be to native speeds and reduce overhead. There is no VM that is 1:1. Some 5% overhead or less maybe??

Never looked at them side by side, honestly. But if all you want is to get a basic feel for a Linux distro, I'd go with Virtualbox simply because of ease of installation and setup.

That said, you do have an even simpler method; run it live from USB. Most distros have a 'live' version (like openSUSE, Mint, Ubuntu, and Fedora to name a few), that you can run without installing ANYTHING. That will let you test your hardware, and get a feel for things. You won't be able to save your desktop and settings, though, so it will only last until a reboot. And one advantage to going Virtualbox over live-USB is that you can try out the different desktop environments. KDE, Gnome, XFCE, Enlightenment, Unity...all different, and one may appeal more than another.