Re: The other way around?
Gah! There are enough people here who've already said this and it's probably doing the OP's head in that everyone is telling him the question is wrong rather than actually giving an answer. But I do the same - Windows 8 as the host and GNU/Linux (Debian in this case) as the guest. For me that gives the best of both - the friendly and well-thought-out design of Windows with the raw capability of GNU/Linux.
I use Virtualbox and I can throw as many cores and as much RAM to the guest as I like and it works pretty bloody well. I would guess the OP (understandably enough) has the view that Linux is the solid foundation and also there may be a VM-tax on the efficiency of the guest. And as they want Windows for goofing around in the GUI and Linux for furious compilation, they think that way round is best. I've found Windows 8 to be a very solid host, I don't think there's any concern there. I can't answer with certainty about a performance hit because the machine is virtual, but I'll say it performs very well for me and modern chips have special functions to support virtualization which means the virtual machine can be quite close to running on the metal. It's virtualization, not an emulator and the days of clear distinction between bare-metal hypervisors and software hypervisors are gone.
I wish I could give the OP more of the answers to their specific questions. I could using VirtualBox with Windows as host. For example, you can set up a shared disk space which is (probably) a better way of achieving what the OP wants than Samba. You can set a USB device to only be visible by the guest (though you'll need to leave said device plugged in).
Honestly, I was going to hold off on joining the "Other way round" bandwagon, but this particular part of the OP's question persuaded me to just add my own opinion that it might be a good idea:
"I'm fine to put good money into hardware, 32GB RAM and 2x Xeon are not out of question. Also happy to split resources in half - Windows does not need to have all the goodies."
Reason that this persuaded me to join in is because it shows a misconception. If you're willing to do that sort of hardware then there is no way that you need to "split resources in half". Clearly if the OP wants to do heavy compiling, then all you would need to do would be to install Windows on that set up, tell VirtualBox to give the guest (Linux) 14 cores and 28GB RAM and you're going to have a mighty powerful compiling machine. It's not going to be held back by the Windows host doing the odd bit of USB port handling, et al.
The Intel E3, E5 and E7 chips integrate the newer virtualization technology which is worth having. Really lets the host just get out of the way of the guest and the metal. It's available in some Haswell chips as well.
Anyway, those are my thoughts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
