I really wanted to like Hyper-V. It’s fully integrated into Windows and runs bare metal, so I was expecting stellar performance and a smooth experience. I was going to run a Linux box for some projects, get to work with Docker for Windows, and do it all with good power management, smooth transitions and without sacrificing performance.

And then reality hit.

1. Hyper-V doesn’t support resolutions higher than 1920×1080 with Linux guests. And even that is only adjustable by editing grub configuration which requires a reboot. The viewer allows zooming, but not in full screen mode. With a laptop resolution of 3200×1800, that leaves me with a half empty screen or a small window on the desktop.
2. Networking support is mostly manual, especially when Wi-Fi is involved. You have to drop into PowerShell to manually configure vSwitch with NAT. Need DHCP? Nope, can’t have it. Go install a third party application.
3. Audio is not supported for Linux guests. Just like with the resolution issue, you’re forced to use remote X server or xrdp. Both are a pain to setup and didn’t provide acceptable performance for me.
4. To top it all off, you can’t use any other virtualization solution when Hyper-V is enabled. Do you want both Docker for Windows and a normal Linux desktop VM experience? Too bad… VMware allows you to virtualize VT-x/EPT so you can run a hypervisor inside your guest. Hyper-V doesn’t.

It seems like Hyper-V is just not there yet. It might work well for Windows guests or Linux server guests, but for Linux desktop guest it’s just not enough.