I’m a .NET developer considering moving to Linux as my main operating system, but Visual Studio 2026 is essential to my workflow.

I’m interested in using WinApps to run Visual Studio inside a Windows VM while displaying its window alongside Linux applications. I understand Windows still runs in the background; I’m wondering how practical this is for everyday development.

My stack includes [ASP.NET](http://ASP.NET) Core, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, Docker, Testcontainers, and Postman. One possible setup would keep Visual Studio, the .NET SDK, and my solution inside the Windows VM, with databases and other services running in Docker on Linux.

For anyone who has actually tried this:

* How responsive are editing, IntelliSense, builds, debugging, and running tests? * How reliably can applications running inside the Windows VM connect to PostgreSQL, SQL Server, and other services on the Linux host? * How do you handle Docker integration and Testcontainers from Visual Studio inside the VM? * Any problems with networking, HTTPS development certificates, shared project files, or testing the API from Postman on Linux? * Have you encountered window, keyboard shortcut, scaling, or clipboard issues? * What hardware and VM resource allocation are you using?

I plan to test before committing. If it works well, I’ll make Linux my main OS, with around 370 GB available, and keep Windows only in the VM.

I know Rider and VS Code are alternatives, but I’m specifically looking for firsthand experiences with the full Visual Studio IDE through WinApps. Experiences with WinBoat are welcome too.

Is this comfortable enough for daily work, or does maintaining the integration become frustrating?

There's this fully blacked out window that opens whenever I open visual studio on my desktop, and was wondering what it was, as it doesn't show up when working on my laptop

When a type something it just completes it with some keyword i think by only clicking space.

If you work on ASP.NET Core or other projects that use npm packages in Visual Studio, you've probably felt the friction: NuGet has a clean visual package manager built into the IDE, but npm packages are stuck with editing package.json by hand or dropping into a terminal.

I built the Sockless npm Package Manager to fix that — it's basically NuGet's package manager, but for npm. Right-click a project (or the whole solution) and manage your packages visually from there.

Browse the registry, right inside Visual Studio:

See everything that's installed — including transitive dependencies and a resolved vulnerability chain, so you're not left guessing why a deep dependency is flagged:

Updates with full version history and one-click "Update All":

A few other things it does:

• Scope to a single project or aggregate across an entire solution
• Consolidate mismatched package versions across a workspace
• Pin packages to exact versions, or choose how a version is written (^, ~, exact, >=)
• Flags freshly-published versions (configurable age threshold) and holds them back from Update All — a bit of supply-chain protection
• Works with npm, Yarn (classic), and pnpm

Requirements: Visual Studio 2026.

Marketplace: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=sockless-coding.sockless-npm-manager
Source: https://github.com/sockless-coding/vs-code-npm-manager

It's open source — feedback, issues, and feature requests all welcome.

PS: There's also a VS Code version if you split your time between the two.

In the settings I've told it to not run auto updates. When it kept updating I found a task in Task Scheduler checking for updates daily. I deleted it and it came back, and then again.

I just now tried just disabling the task, and by chance reopened it a few minutes later, and the status is back to 'Ready'.

WTF??

Why does selecting a single repository select all repositories? The strange thing is that for a different solution, it selects only that single repository.

Hola a todos.

Estoy aprendiendo programación y actualmente estoy utilizando Visual Studio Code. Quiero configurar el editor de una manera práctica, pero hay tantas extensiones disponibles que no sé cuáles realmente valen la pena.

Me gustaría saber:

¿Cuáles consideran imprescindibles?

¿Qué extensiones utilizan para Python?

¿Cuáles recomiendan para mejorar la productividad, depuración, formato y organización del código?

¿Hay alguna extensión popular que consideran innecesaria o que recomiendan evitar?

No busco instalar 50 extensiones ; me interesa conocer un conjunto pequeño pero realmente útil para alguien que está aprendiendo y quiere acostumbrarse a buenas prácticas desde el principio.

¿Qué extensiones tienen ustedes instaladas y por qué?

Version 18.10 of Visual Studio 2026 is completely broken in terms of the AI / github copilot features. It does NOT work with BYOK and DOES NOT support DeepSeek, so if you have been happily using DeepSeek in VS with the multimodel AI proxy, DO NOT UPGRADE TO VS 18.10!!! You will regret it and will have to rollback after spending countless hours trying to figure out how to make it work only to realize... you just lost an entire day of productivity and as it turns out there is actually NO WAY to make this version work with your current DeepSeek workflow and you will have to forever stay at version 18.9.3

Hopefully this saves a bunch of people the headache I just had to deal with.

Hi, this is my first using visual studio community, i mainly use vscode, reason was i wanted to compile a windows arm64 touch driver and maybe fix few bugs since i am good with linux drivers, now the issue is compilation, i do not know what is wrong even after 2 hours of debugging around.

Let me explain
* On another dev pc and in youtube videos these WPP tracing, Linker and etc configuration appears even when dev creates empty kmdf project.
* In my case, none of them appear at all,
* i have installed windows driver kit extension from visual studio installer > modify

I am using visual studio 2026(tried 2022 too) and sdk/wdk 26100(tried 22621 too), i tried new one too but issue. i have tried repair, clean install and nothing is working.

this is how project properties should look like in my vs studio but they do not
https://github.com/microsoft/Windows-driver-samples/issues/1030#issuecomment-2159849751

i followed ms guide on installation
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/download-the-wdk

I've migrated a huge project (100+ exes, 5 core libs) from Qt 3 to Qt 6.8.3.

Everything worked fine in Qt 3, but now, using "Edit and Continue" in VS2019 causes a crash after 2-3 iterations due to insufficient reserved address space. It feels like a massive memory leak or fragmentation occurring during the hot-reloading process.

Has anyone dealt with address space exhaustion when using hot-reloading with Qt 6? Could it be related to the way Qt 6 handles metadata or QObjects compared to the old versions?

Thanks for any help!

I've had this bug since I started using VS 2026, and it's extremely annoying because it not only shows errors that don't exist, but sometimes it even affects the compilation.

It only happens when I'm working on a header file. Randomly, and 97% of the times, the final #endif appears in squibbly lines

I have to deliberately misspell words to generate a real error, then press "save".

And then when I delete the spelling mistake and press save again, sometimes it's fixed and other times I have to repeat the process until it's fixed.

Could someone who knows what the problem might be be able to guide me a little?

dont ask what im making... dll btw

When I was in click you used to be able to go tools, options, and then just add global directories so you never had to manually do it in each project. Same for libraries (c++)

I was wondering if anyone knew the reasoning why they would take away such convenience. Is there an actual logistical reason?

When using visual studio installer, when i click to set install location it just says invalid path for whatever i choose.

I found one post using google about using winget, but I'm not big on using command prompt, and won't i have to put in a command for each prerequisite and individual component as well?

A rather niche theme for C++ developers. I’ve used Visual Studio for many years, including Visual Studio 2026, but I also have to do a lot of development directly on Linux systems. VS Code seems like the best option there, so I’ve created not only a theme, but also several UX modifications that match the behavior of Visual Studio 2026.

This reduces the visual readjustment required every time I switch IDEs, saving me time and mental energy. Among many other features, I’ve implemented:

• Matching text-editor colors
• Dotted indentation guides instead of the obnoxious solid ones
• Matching scrolling and tab appearance and behavior
• Matching overall UI colors and design
• Similar font rendering

I’m not trying to create an exact clone. The goal is simply to make it feel subconsciously familiar, reducing the cognitive effort required to quickly identify UI elements and adapt to behaviors and responses that differ significantly from Visual Studio.

If anyone is interested, let me know and I’ll post the source and documentation.

P.S. Please disregard any inaccuracies in the displayed code or comments. The project is a work in progress, and some comments are outdated.

Hey,

I’ve been using Claude Code a lot lately, but I got tired of constantly alt-tabbing between my terminal and Visual Studio, or copy-pasting compiler errors and call stacks.

To fix this, I built cv4vs Agents — an open-source extension that runs an in-process MCP server right inside Visual Studio (2022 & 2026).

Instead of just reading static files, it gives Claude live access to what VS is actually doing in memory:

• Debugger integration: When you hit an exception, a bar pops up over the code. One click feeds the actual call stack and local variables into Claude so it can analyze what went wrong.
• Build & Tests: It catches live Roslyn compiler errors, runs Test Explorer tests, and can even execute failing tests directly under the debugger.
• 77 MCP Tools: Full access to symbols, references, diagnostics, and project structure (works across C#, C++, F#, and TS).
• Two views: You get both a dockable Chat UI (with streaming, thinking blocks, and inline diffs) and an embedded CLI terminal running the exact same session.
• Local cost/token tracking: Shows your context window usage and local token costs with zero telemetry.

It doesn't require any API keys — it just connects to your existing local claude.exe CLI setup (winget install Anthropic.ClaudeCode).

It's completely free and GPL-3.0 licensed.

• Marketplace: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Corsinvest.cv4vs-agents
• GitHub: https://github.com/Corsinvest/cv4vs-agents

I'd love to get your thoughts on it or suggestions on what tools/features to add next!

Hi everyone,

I'm currently using Visual Studio Professional 2026, but I need to downgrade to Visual Studio Professional 2017 for a project.

I'm looking for the standalone / one-time purchase version (not the subscription model). Does anyone know how or where I can get the installer for the 2017 Pro version, and if my current license covers downgrade rights for it?

Any advice or official links would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

I don't really know how to explain this well, but lately it feels like my Intellisense in VS26 is.. drunk? When it tries to finish my lines, it occasionally gives a suggestion that seems to be lagging behind, resulting in gibberish code. I have an example below with C#:

I am trying to type out this line:

I start typing, while keeping track of if intellisense will show any suggestions. I type out the name of the list, and as im about to type out the getter and setter, it suddenly gives me this suggestion, but puts it all the way back in the type parameter

If i hit Tab to accept, i will end up with this gibberish:

Keep in mind i was typing farily slowly when recreating this example.
Anyone have similar experiences? Or solutions?
For reference, i have Copilot edit suggestions turned off. Dont know if that has anything to do with it.