Create a Stable Virtualized Windows OS on Ubuntu

Question

How can I create a virtualized windows (preferably W10) OS on Ubuntu? I want to just purchase a license and have a VM that I can keep indefinitely.

Basically, I just want to have a full Windows OS that I can utilize on my Ubuntu machine. I don't want to dual boot, and I need to use my Ubuntu OS at the same time (i.e. I need to be able to switch between OSs instantaneously as well as utilize Windows in a window and instantaneously share files, clipboard etc between both).

I just need a totally normal Windows OS that I can access in a window while my Ubuntu OS is running.

I've had success with the Windows development environment in Virtualbox, this meets my needs perfectly, but isn't an effective solution because the license expires. I'd like to just purchase a license and keep the Windows development environment, but I'm just not sure if this would work or not and I've struggled to find clear information on the internet about this.

Thanks in advance.

Edit: the ReactOS project is interesting, but I don't believe it supports multithreading and I'm just going to assume that at least one of my Windows apps will be incompatible; I'd love to go that route but I just don't believe it will work from what I've read.

Edit: one significant concern I have is that I'll create a VM and spend the money on the license only to later have that license permanently invalidated, or that the license will somehow be invalidated via creation of the VM. I'm just not familiar enough with how Windows licensing works to be confident that I'm not going to mess up somewhere and waste money.

Answer 1

You can do that with any virtualization solution. While virtualbox would work fine, I would recommend KVM/QEMU with virt-manager as frontend.

QEMU/KVM installation

Note that you need to enable virtualization extension support in your UEFI/BIOS. Intel calls it VTx while on AMD it is called SVM. Make sure that you also enable IOMMU if present.

KVM (kernel virtual machine) is integrated into the linux kernel, while libvirt/QEMU provides an interface for communicating with KVM.

KVM is a type 1 hypervisor, which means that it runs directly on the hardware. This eliminates resource overhead in contrast to type 2 hypervisors like VirtualBox, resulting in lower latency and a overall higher performance.

1. Install qemu

apt install qemu-kvm libvirt-daemon-system libvirt-clients bridge-utils

2. check KVM CPU support

kvm-ok

The output should look as following:

INFO: /dev/kvm exists
KVM acceleration can be used

You should reboot your system now to make sure everything goes smoothly.

3. install and launch virt-manager

We will use virt-manager as GUI frontend for controlling our virtual machines. Install it as following:

apt install virt-manager

And launch it with virt-manager

It will ask you for your sudo password then.

4. get required ISOs

You can download an official Windows 10 ISO from microsoft.

We also need the virtio drivers for Windows to recognize the virtual disks.

You can find the latest stable version here.

5. create virtual machine

After you've started virt-manager, simply click on the button with the green frame to start the VM creation wizard.

Choose the downloaded ISO and select Windows as operating system.

Configure disk size as well as CPU and RAM. Note that you can change CPU and RAM as well as any peripheral device without any problems at a later stage.

5.1 mount virtio drivers

Windows is by default not able to detect the attached virtual disk. During installation you can select a CD with the necessary drivers, for that you need to mount the previously downloaded virtio-win-xxx.iso on a second virtual CD drive.

1. open VM configuration

2. click Add Hardware

3. select storage and change Device type to CDROM

4. click on Manage to select the media for the new device

5. select the virtio ISO and click "Choose Volume"

6. start the VM

Simply double-click on your newly created VM in virt-manager and click on the Play button on top of the new window to start the VM.

7. install Windows

i will not go further into detail on this step, it should be fairly self explanatory. Note that during partitioning, you need to select to load drivers from external media to load the virtio drivers. Otherwise the virtual disk cannot be found.