@Chronoicle "internal heap" errors and similar can usually be fixed by creating an environment variable named PreferredToolArchitecture with the value x64 (more info). After creating it, restart VS and/or the computer and try to compile again.
It doesn't really get better than debugging with VS, so if you can setup a Windows machine for it, I think that you should.
I found that VS Code (on Linux) can debug code with GDB, might be interesting to check as well https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/languages/cpp