Pre-canned VM Windows 11 development environment

Did you know that Microsoft provides free virtual machine images of the latest version of Windows – with developer tools, SDK’s, and samples all pre-installed? Microsoft provide regularly updated virtual machine images for VMWare, Hyper-V, VirtualBox, and Parallels.

A few important points. The images are not activated and cannot be activated – even with a valid product key.

What about Linux?

If you want to install and run a Linux distro (Ubuntu for example), you can use Virtualbox/VMWare or the built in Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). With WSL, you get a Linux command prompt mounted on your local Windows filesystem and can launch X-windows apps that pop up on your Windows desktop in separate windows.

The experience is kind of a weird mash-up of Windows and Linux on the same system at the same time. Kind of like a better/embedded version of cygwin. It’s not as contained as a virtual machine host app like Virtualbox/VMWare that keeps all your windows in the virtual machine host app; but this might be enough for most people.

I haven’t done any experiments, but would love to test out some OpenGL/Vulkan apps to see if you get full GPU accelerated rendering.