I would prefer VMs than dual booting for a few reason:

• I can ssh to my shell in the VM from my host OS without having to setup any kind of GUI or hassles around that.
• Also, my major goal of setting up a stable system would include to use a single minimal very stable OS with exact packages for my needs. Reproducibility is a plus too for nix. I can do whatever I want in the vm and nothing would break my hostOS as long as i play around in the VM.