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I've been looking to use a Linux VM as my development environment as a way to start fresh and have a whole OS dedicated to dev. I use two computers mainly, my Windows desktop and a Macbook. What I'd really like to do is create a Linux VM an have it live on a network drive (probably hosted on the desktop) and be able to run that VM from either the Windows machine or the Macbook.

Is there any software/configuration that will let me do this? I guess I'd be looking for some software like VMware that can run on both Windows and Mac and use the same type of a file for its VM.

Edit: I started searching around about running a VM from a Google Drive folder. I thought this would basically accomplish what I want, but someone brought up a good point that turns me off to this. When any file on the VM gets changed the entire VM (however large it may be, let's say 5gb) would have to be resynced causing a lot of unnecessary network traffic.

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Any of these should work:

  • Use the same software like Virtualbox on both computers, and from the Windows one share the folder with the VM configuration + the VM storage files, and connect to that shared folder from the Mac
  • Use any virtualization software at e.g. the Windows computer, run the VM and connect to it with SSH or any graphical access like X / VNC
  • Run a cloud VM with a service like Amazon EC2 or any other
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    Remote desktop of some form is the best solution if you're primarily going to be using this on the same network.
    – music2myear
    Commented Jan 7, 2017 at 0:31
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Instead of syncing the file via Google Drive, simply sync it via a network drive on a local network.

Windows and OSX both have support for smb (network shares), set this up on your machines and it should work nicely.

*I'm presuming that the vm format for the PC and Mac is the same.

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