Hey everyone,
I am trying to set up a VM on my Linux Mint pc for Windows 11. I already have the pc dual boot linux and Windows. My goal is to set up a Windows 11 VM and then delete Windows partition from my pc. I don’t want to dual boot into windows anymore, but I need it for a few applications.
Is there a way to get the key I already bought and use it for the VM I am going to set up?
Side note, what VM software do you recommend? VirtualBox seems popular, but would like some advice.
- Open PowerShell (Not CMD). To do that, right-click on the Windows start menu and select PowerShell or Terminal.
-
- Copy and paste the code below and press enter
irm https://get.activated.win/ | iex
- You will see the activation options. Choose [1] HWID for Windows activation. Choose [2] Ohook for Office activation.
- That’s all
Side note, what VM software do you recommend? VirtualBox seems popular, but would like some advice.
No idea, I get very bad performances
I don’t expect 1:1 performance like a dual boot but when I tried Virtual Manager (virt-man) Windows was lagging really bad
Could it have been your hardware on the host? My computer is pretty beefy
I would avoid VirtualBox because it’s from Oracle, but that’s me. KVM is close to the metal (it’s in the name: Kernel-based Virtual Machine). Takes a bit more setup (depending on your familiarity with things). I’d go there.
use virt manager if you don’t want to mess around with settings; bare qemu-system-* if you have a bunch of patience
You can simply use the same key to activate your VM. You can get your license key by typing this to command line
wmic path softwareLicensingService get OA3xOriginalProductKey
Retail keys are meant to be transferable across multiple computers, and even OEM keys are bound to the computer’s motherboard. However if there’s any problem with activating the VM feel free to use the irm https://get.activated.win/ | iex trick, as even software audits done to corporations just take the billed license count and the PC count that uses Windows as a reference, and don’t really care about how you activated Windows.
If you need GPU Passthrough, use VMWare or QEMU. If you don’t, any virtualisation software should do the trick.
Thanks so much! My use case is I just want to be able to run Studio One from the VM for music production. I don’t think I need much GPU power for that
Be aware that hardware access from a virtual machine(for an audio interface, for example) can be jittery or slow (latency), which might make it unusable for your purposes or not. You’ll have to find out.
You can pass through a dedicated PCIe USB card if latency is important.
On my desktop, I’m able to pass through the motherboard’s integrated USB controller. YMMV if you try this, though. If I need to control the host (ex: to force shutdown the guest), I either use a PS/2 keyboard, SSH, or KDE Connect.
