[jspizziri]

In my case (and I suspect many others) the answer is Xcode. I develop native apps which means I need access to an iOS dev environment. iOS development is nearly impossible without Xcode, so the only way to do it is either pay a virtualization penalty (which is not appealing when Xcode builds already take a massive amount of time), have a specific machine just for iOS work (which would be super inconvenient, even with a virtual KVM), use a Hackintosh (which have problems), or pay Apples exorbitant fees for hardware.

I dream of a day when I can daily drive Linux and also do dev on iOS, but currently that’s not really possible without some unacceptable compromise. I’ve done quite a bit of research and have yet to find a viable solution (recommendations welcome).

[sokoloff]

This might not be an answer you like, but I find the virtualization penalty (running on proxmox [kvm]) to be acceptable. In synthetic benchmarks, the penalty is possible to measure but small (1-3% typically). Passing through a AMD graphics card and a USB port, I get a pretty good experience in using it and an excellent experience in administering it [backups/snapshots, restores, etc. are all super clean].

If I measure against "is it viable?", for me the answer is "absolutely, yes".