How to setup environment for biped
I have reloaded ROS and ubuntu a few times on a quad core windows box. No problems with current setup. Finished Kenetic & Melodic, & Gazebo beginner examples. Everything worked per ROS/Gazebo tutorials: Ported mesh in/out of Inkscape, FreeCAD, blender. Built 3-wheeled robot, Velodyne, etc. Now sitting on ubuntu 18.04 with ROS Melodic. However, I want to focus on training TALOS or a derivative thereof in Gazebo for future use in non-industrial apps. Must I blow my environment away again, reload older ubuntu & Ros kenetic & gazebo to go back in time to explore TALOS in gazebo? Or, should I wait patiently for a different robot to come along its merry way, plow right in and SDF my own, etc? Thanks.
Not sure I understand your question completely, but at least for Talos the situation is clear: if you want an officially supported simulation going, you'll have to be running Kinetic, as the installation guide(s) currently say:
If you don't care about support, then you could of course see whether you can get the Talos (simulated) software stack running under Melodic. There is a good chance it'll run, if built from source in your workspace.
No guarantees though: PAL probably has a reason for limiting support to Kinetic for now, and I've not tested these packages on Melodic.
If you are that concerned about your content, I would recommend you to deploy the TALOS simulation on a Kinetic docker and work on it, this could be a best solution or try to compile the packages on your machine and check.
Docker could indeed be an option.
It won't be as convenient as a "native" install though, but certainly workable.