- Develops on a Linux box without GPU, repurposes Windows gaming machine with RTX 5070 as headless Linux GPU server via WSL2.
- Uses WSL2's NVIDIA driver passthrough; nvidia-smi works inside Ubuntu with no additional driver installs.
- Sets up SSH access: WSL2 sshd on port 2345, key auth only, with Windows portproxy and firewall rule; uses an ssh alias on the dev box.
- Key gotcha: WSL idle shutdown kills VM after ~60 seconds; fixed by scheduled task running 'wsl -- sleep infinity' at logon (vmIdleTimeout=-1 didn't work).
- Ubuntu 24.04 ignores custom SSH port due to systemd socket activation; must disable ssh.socket and enable ssh.service.
- Avoids networkingMode=mirrored if using Docker/Podman on Windows; uses NAT + portproxy instead.
- nvidia-smi not found over non-interactive SSH because WSL's /usr/lib/wsl/lib not in PATH; use full path.
- Virtualization (SVM Mode on AMD) must be enabled in BIOS to allow WSL2.
- Blackwell cards require CUDA 12.8+; uses PyTorch cu128 build for CLIP-based free-text image search workflow from the Linux box.