For complex software, real-life testing all the corners is impossible.
You'd get some value out of people running it on VMs, some people running it on the same old hardware, some people running it on cutting-edge hardware, some people running it for extended periods and doing dist-upgrades, some people constantly reinstalling it (even within a VM).
There are so many places software could fail. Especially things that aren't repeated often seem to fail: For example, websites where logging in works, but creating a user fails and nobody notices, because all employees already have accounts.
I think you're misinterpreting my response. Of course there's value in testing operating systems within VMs. In fact, a solid chunk (if not most) of the Ubuntu install-base is VMs, believe it or not. I wasn't talking about that at all, but rather responding to the idea that, if I used a VM as my development platform, my problems would go away. In reality, in that context, it really changes nothing.
For complex software, real-life testing all the corners is impossible.
You'd get some value out of people running it on VMs, some people running it on the same old hardware, some people running it on cutting-edge hardware, some people running it for extended periods and doing dist-upgrades, some people constantly reinstalling it (even within a VM).
There are so many places software could fail. Especially things that aren't repeated often seem to fail: For example, websites where logging in works, but creating a user fails and nobody notices, because all employees already have accounts.