Windows Inside of Linux

Huge shoutout for creating this web hosting tutorial! Ive examined DreamHost and HostGator, however Cloudways with TST20 coupon is the final saver.

Do you recommend this solution instead of continuing to use Windows as a daily driver? I game and use HDR and surround sound on my TV. If Windows is working for me now, would you recommend I change or wait until Windows isn't right for me anymore?

His last video "qemu is amazingly fast way faster then anything else." *convinces me to replace my os for a bare metal manjaro install, so i can use windows in qemu* Then watch this vide "yeaaa qemu is pretty slow if you dont do all these things, and that shoooould help it." whered the energy go? lol

When you did the comparison I think you should have left RAM & CPU exactly the same during both tests so that you were comparing the differences only between qcow2 & raw disk. In addition, the qcow2 file test should have been done on the exact same hard drive as the raw test.

What I really want is a way to run a headless windows VM in Linux (windows 11), and then have some kind of KDE Plasma integration etc, where I can launch my Steam Games and they look like they are running directly on linux, but it's really a window rendering the VM's display output in it for that game. Or I can run Calc from windows, but it looks like a linux app, and so on.

Seamless Integration

Also you can run dual gpus in your machine and optimally you have 1 AMD gpu and 1 Nvidia GPU. In my case I have a Raedon 6950XT and an Nvidia 3090 TI. I run linux on the host OS on the 6950XT (what's going out to all my monitors). And in the Windows VM I can pass through my 3090 TI and have it configured in headless mode since it doesn't need any of it's Port outputs.

I will tell you though, my Ryzen 9 7950x with 128gb pushing two high end gpus (6950xt and 3090ti) get's HOT, it's a little space heater. Definitely recommend a full tower case and venting the air out of the room or something.

There is some significant mouse input lag when I use Video virtio but there is no lag when i use Qxl. What is causing this?

can u help me get my camera working on arch linux with my surface go 2 plz im struggling for so long

Mouse got pretty slow and laggy after virtio installation. Can someone help me with this?

I love gaming on Linux but nvidias drivers pushed me over the edge. I tried playing starfield but theirs a bug with nvidias drivers on Linux. I'll run most of my games on Linux but having a windows VM just in case is nice.

Well I'm a Mint user who just moved to Arch and I'm having no luck gaming on Bottles. Is this what I should be doing?

if you dont mind could you share already installed VMDK files? a blank win10 without any bloatware would be great :D

Chris, you most probably don't read this but...
You have a GREAT CHANNEL; I really enjoy what you are doing.

Just one thing. In the corporate world, we still have 5%-10% of OS running on bare metal. There are many use cases where that is still required. Or where the technology don't work with VMs.

.QCOW is not a good format to use when using virtual disks. You want .img format. And addition to this, you need to ditch sata and use virtio for storage. (note: this would require the virtio driver when installing windows but it is soo much worth the performance you will get out of this). Love virt-manager, simply the best.

will dedicated hdd will be faster than a non-dedicated ssd?

i just switched to Linux a few months back. The only thing i missed bad was my sweet MS Office and PlayOnLinux just sucks.
Thank you soo much !!!!!!!!

Simply Awesome....THANK YOUUU !!!!!!!!!!!1

Yaaa 🎉!!! I just updated my Omen 17 laptop and can set up a virtual windows to run Scrivener!!! I had Windows 10 when I first opened it, so now I will have to run Powershell to get my product key from the Bios. I am sure it’s hiding there.

I NEED THIS MACOS ACELERATIONNN VIDEOOOOOOOOOOO AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
You videos is very amazing, Are you god! :D
Thanks for you experience share with our :,D
PSD: I don't speak english :,D

When is the new GPU passthrough?

This is awesome Titus! How much horse power does the host machine have?

Hi Chris or anyone that is interested, you can skip the black "hi" screen by pressing ctrl + shift + delete or with ctrl + alt + delete; and opening task manager.

I'm 70 and started computers when they had piano keys and three phase power supplies and 10 meg removeable disk packs called "platters" hahaha, so you know how much I really hate "widows" (sic) - I was debugging some older proxmox scsi drives on another idle box (spinup issues) I thought OK better get up to speed with UBUNTU for sg_format etc, (first time user for it - but used to use RED HAT original ) The UBUNTU ISO ate my windoze install (my fault / half asleep) THIS WAS NOT A PORTENT OF DOOM, it's the total opposite and so also for my friend and business partner (coder/engineer) who uses W(swear word deleted) as he runs ENG to GERMAN translation sofware (he's a LINUX head) - this showed me the INNER LIGHT - screw windoze, don't mess around any more VM it) I am putting you into an 'effing safety container goodbye Bill, Chris Thanks for the amazing video!!! I live in Thailand (Hua Hin area) look me up and the dinner's on me!!! I like computers again after a LONG break.....

why not duel boot?

Isn't UEFI required for PCI pass-through though? TBH for the last 6 years I've been trying to run everything in UEFI mode. I know BIOS is often simpler to set up but I think it's time to let it die and improve the ease of UEFI VM creation.
On another note it would've been nice to see a speed comparison with a properly set up QCOW2 virtual drive on a NVME SSD (with the "Virtio SCSI" controller, "directsync" cache mode, "unmap" discard mode or some better cache/discard mode if there is for a SSD) and passing a physical drive.

a usb drive on usb3 will be faster than a spinning drive, so maybe the virtual drive can live on that

I love watching you do these amazing installs but it goes right over my head, I'm the peasant that uses windows mail, I don't know any better.

So if I do this I can use Windows for everything like it's a regular installation?

Windows 11 is why I am going back to Linux.

I've wanted to make linux my daily driver since Red Hat in 2001. Especially when I found a copy of Quake 3 for Linux for $1 at a Dollar Tree in New Jersey.

Being a gamer and lack of gaming support on Linux is the only reason I am still Windows.

This gets me closer to gaming on Linux and I don't have to WINE about the low FPS.

OK Chris, trying to work through this. I think I got the QEMU part done (the copy the commands links are very helpful). The directions on your "Setting Up Windows Inside Linux" kind of broke down at the "Optimizing Windows VM" part. Directions are kind of sketchy there. What am I supposed to do? The GitHub page is quite confusing.

Hey Chris! Since you work on Windows and Linux environment I have though case. Is there a legitimate path to connect exchange on Linux? In Windows based corporations OUTLOOK is the only authorized mail client. However I have not found a way to successfully migrate it to Linux. I have to have Virtual Windows machine to maintain access. Any feedback would be appreciated or perhaps you could do an episode and bring to the table this problem that certainly there are folks facing the same limitation.

Instead of using a whole hard drive, can you just use a partition on that physical disk as your virtual disk? Have that partition look like a whole drive to the windows install?

I think it is a mistake to use entire drives, instead of just a file on a drive, one of the best features of a VM is that you can create incremental snapshots even of a running state.
Ofcause you could have at least snapshots of the off state you can take to a file when the VM is turned off using a 3rd party tool and than pick a tool which also does it incrementally. But the need to read the entire drive each time is inconvenient.

Thanks for the video!

it also works on a partition, for example I have only one disk and I have Linux on it and if I create a partition of, for example, 50GB and install Windows on the partition, I would partition the disk via GParted live cd, would that work? I would be happy if so

I'm using a t480 thinkpad , 500 gig nvme with 32 gig memory with MX Linux on it, I want to update the bios on this Thinkpad but can't figure out how on a Linux distro, it's just over my head. If I install windows 10 in a VM can I use windows to update the bios this way. I haven't had windows in a decade, updated laptop bios' in years past with it though. So just wondering if windows in a VM would or would not work to update this bios. Thanks for any reply. PS good video, this is what I would go by if you think I can get this done. Oh and if this would work then I will do it on my Thinkpad w530. Or you could make a good video on how to update a bios using a Linux os.

I found a way easier way (if you don't need to use Linux and windows parallel): Put Windows on an external drive (e.g. with rufus windows to go) and boot the externel drive

did you make a pass through gpu guide ?

Passing through the hard Drive does not make Windows mess up uefi ?

Windows inside of Linux?

Not in a million years.

It would be great if you can show the final XML file generated by virtual manager.

I wiped all partitions from the ssd with gparted but then windows setup said that I can't install it to that drive. Why is that?

Hi Chris I got a question , how to work with proxmox? , thank you

Your VM has more resources than my laptop, no doubts it is smooth

Do you need 2 separate video cards if you want to pass through? One for Linux and the other one for Windows?

I do not know what i am doing wrong, it says i have 1.0 Hz in display and everything feels very laggy when moving windows.
I have used virtualbox and VMware before and it did not feel this bad, any idea on how to fix it?

I use Windows on citrix for my client on ubuntu or zorin os.

you could significantly reduce setup times for windows using unattended script AND do an image that already includes all your virtio drivers and other things.... probably cut that install time down even more.