2. Setting up your environment

Getting Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

Considered approaches

We want a way to have our system run the simulation smoothly to make development enjoyable, this requires GPU accelerated graphics. In the case of a graphics card that is within the same chip as the CPU, all the approaches below should work. The issue arises when the computer has a dedicated GPU, thus making it complicated for the simulator to access the GPU from a virtual machine. Without a hypervisor type 1, only one OS can use the GPU at a time, meaning only the host OS uses the GPU, meaning no GPU for our virtual machine. Ideally, we would run gazebo natively, ensuring direct access to the GPU.

1. Dual booting
   • Non-trivial to set up
   • Not universal, notably, complicated on Mac.
2. WSL/VM for tool set + Gazebo running natively
   • Supported platforms for gazebo
   • Gazebo's Windows support doesn't include the GUI at the time of writing
   • Untested on Mac
3. WSL by itself
   • Requires Windows machine
   • Doesn't work with some GPUs, notably Intel Iris Xe GPU
   • Otherwise is the way to go if you have a Windows machine with a GPU that works.
4. Virtual machine by itself
   • Doesn't work with GPUs at all

Getting Git, ROS 2, Gazebo simulator, PX4 firmware, QGroundControl, Tmux

Optional tools