Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that trying out distros as VMs is useless. If you just like to window-shop a dozen or so distros just for the novelty of it, trying them out as VMs makes total sense, it’s quick and easy. But if you’ve made up your mind, I think it makes sense to skip the VM part and just install it and use it for a month or two – in my opinion that’s the only way to see whether it is the right distro for me in the long run.
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Welcome to the forum 
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Actually, that’s exactly what you’re saying,
By nature something that is a waste of time is pointless, counterproductive, ineffective, or in this case as you say useless. Now semantics aside, VM’s are very powerful, useful tools, mainly in my case for testing purposes. It’s unfortunate you do not see much value in VM’s, but for a lot of users VM’s are an essential way to test things out first. I only have one laptop. I can’t just put a new distro on it without first having vetted it in a VM first to see if I like the way the system is setup, see if I can familiarize myself with the package manager, tweak (and inevitably break) and test various system options, etc. and it all comes with absolutely no risk. For what I want and need I can’t beat those options, so testing out a new distro in a VM is paramount for me before I take the plunge to install it bare metal. For me and my workflow it’s a no-brainer, to test things out. It’s just a test after all. Or rather, it’s just a game if you want to look at it from a different kind of perspective. As others have mentioned, VM’s are great for their own use cases, and even if you don’t see much value in VM’s for your own purposes, doesn’t mean that others don’t see value it in as well. I’ll always encourage users to test in a VM for one simple reason; no risk! 
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- I’m not saying that trying out distros as VMs is useless. (a general statement)
- Here is a specific situation where I find it to be useless. (an exception)
Okay then. I don’t know what else to add to that… 
This post is sponsored by mixcase, a handy utility script for online discourse.
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Pros and cons for both.
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If desktop then just throw in cheap internal SSDs and no need to mess with partitioning. Each distro has its own drive and own EFI partition.
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If using a laptop then can partition up a large USB drive with persistent installs of different distros.
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I use rEFInd boot loader which has nice GUI + extras to boot select.
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Booting Live USB/Drive install is good way to test hardware compatibility. Then checking all hardware to see if installing drivers etc will make it fully functional. Drive persistent install is better if long term troubleshooting rather than trying to get everything working from live USB in one session.
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Live USB/Drive install is simply pure performance test on real hardware and not every device is USB passthrough. i.e. You may want to real hardware test say serial devices, eSATA or multi display monitor connections to be sure.
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Even though Linux has timeshift snapshot/restore. VMs are much easier one click restore when you want to experiment wildly.
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VMs are faster to deploy than doing drive installs
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VMs let you run multiple distros simultaneously if you want to test/install same app across without booting into each.
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Like the idea of drive install to encourage as daily driver test run. VM doesn’t motivate using as daily driver.
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Should you decide you like what you have built up in a VM then you can use virtual to physical migration feature instead of re-installing to drive from square one.
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you will have fun with your new distro!Cheers and welcome
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thanx @all 
Wilkommen in der heimat!
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So, to end the discuss whether a VM makes sense or not, today I installed EOS online with Plasma. I am thrilled at how much more responsive it is compared to Manjaro KDE. Also, it is still slightly less packages compared to the Manjaro minimal installation. What was still missing, I have post-installed me and am now happy no longer to have to see everything so green (no, I have always renounced any additional theming, because I like Vanilla KDE best). Only one question so far: How do I get rid of the text underlay in bash when something is copied in?
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same here, plasma it is 
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I am not sure I know what you are referring to. Can you share a screenshot?
I found the solution by myself:
Edit ~/.bashrc and add
bind 'set enable-bracketed-paste off' 
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Welcome! EOS is my daily driver since December 2020. Other than one modest hiccup involving OS_Prober it has been entirely uneventful. I’ve used xfce and Cinnamon but eventually settled on the latter. EOS is so stable and predictable I’ve even begun using it professionally (online teaching). As an added benefit when I share my screen with my class the kids love it.
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Welcome on board! I think you made the right choice when you switched to EndeavourOS, although Manjaro is also a great system. Here you will find a friendly, helpful community.
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Thanx @zoli62 , of course Manjaro is a good distro, but I have noticed over the years that errors appear in a very mysterious way, which should not be with the system of additional testing of Arch sources. From the logic there can be something wrong. But this should not be bashing, I think Manjaro will become a plan B for me 
OT
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