ROS on win32 laptop VM - is it possible?

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Technically: yes, this is definitely possible. There aren't any special requirements other than that the VM runs a version of Linux that is supported by ROS (and perhaps you could say that somewhat decent 3D accelerated graphics support is also required, but that is only the case if you want to run any kind of visualisation tool, like RViz).

Practically though, for all intents and purposes, I'd venture that, no, on the hw you describe, I wouldn't want to be working with a VM with ROS. As you've already found out, it's just too slow to be of practical use, and you'll just get annoyed by the long waiting times.

You could see whether adding a (cheap) SSD to the laptop improves things (if it doesn't already have one), but even then it's not a recommended solution.

If you can, go for a native (dual-boot) installation.

Edit:

The VM is not likely the issue. I do nearly all of my ROS development and testing on a 2GB 1 CPU core VM. The difference being I run a 64 bit guest on a 64 bit host.

Without more information on the specific hw the OP is using it's hard to say what the problem is, but running 64bit guests on 32bit hosts is definitely not going to help performance (I'm assuming you mean: 32bit host OS on a 64bit cpu).

And it's definitely possible to run ROS on a VM, but based on the many questions I've seen on this board concerning RViz, Gazebo and performance in general, I'd not recommend it.