What are the current best practices for setting up a local php development environment on Windows?

Question

Virtualization

For a long time, I used an Ubuntu virtual machine for development. All developed and maintained sites are located on it at the same time, which is not very convenient, since you need to climb there all the time, create / delete hosts, build new versions of php, and maintain different configs. It's scary to update the software so that something does not fall off. Shared files also work slowly in the VM (which I decided by installing WinNFS).
So, I want to simplify my life: I installed the obvious Docker solution, but the site in it works almost 2 times slower. I read that it is possible to forward file synchronization from WSL, I have not tried it yet, but the number of crutches is already starting to approach the existing version, which is a little annoying.
Should I try Vagrant? I would like to have some simple, quick solution, without unnecessary crutches. You need to be able to work on multiple projects at the same time.
In general, how does one get out of this situation? Does everyone develop on Linux?

Answer 1

I don't think there is much of a choice. My story is similar to yours. At one point, it got to the point that it was physically impossible to deploy the environment in Windows directly, and it was not possible to achieve acceptable performance in a virtual machine. Since then, for many years I have kept Linux - for work, Windows - for games and non-ported software. Setting up the desired environment has been simplified by an order of magnitude. I regret not doing so sooner.

Answer 2

Likewise. 5 years of f*cking with windows. For almost every development sneeze, invent a crutch for Windows.
What I have not tried
- virtual machines - slowly, hemorrhagic
- aka vagrant, slowly
- WSL cheese and slowly
- OpenServer - crutches, slowly hemorrhagic.
Virtual terminals conemu+click+git bash.
As a result, I got stuck when a large application on my Windows hardware barely crawled at all.
Switched completely to ubuntu (kde at work, gnome at home). Happiness has no limit. The application ran over 10x faster with ntfs vs ext4. The whole problem was 90% in the naturally slow Windows file system.
Most of the games are now on linux, the same dotka, civilization in which I roll.
When to play buzz in another - Windows is at hand.
Don't be fooled people, switch to linux. The first experiences of sex with him are not as scary as they paint. But when you are inside the system, you understand it better. Especially for backers, knowing linux without working on it every day is more difficult.
Sex with him ends very quickly and the idyll begins.
Yes, of course visual shells are more stable in Windows now than in linux, but this is a trifle compared to all the pluses that you get.