➡ Today, we’re discussing how to install Windows 11 on a Linux system using virtualization technology. This process, while not overly simple, allows you to run Windows applications on your Linux system with minimal issues. The advantage of this method is that it prevents Windows from taking over your computer, as it can in a dual boot scenario. We’ll be using Ubuntu 24.04, KMU KVM for virtualization, and a few other tools to achieve this.
➡ This text provides a guide on how to set up and optimize a Windows 11 Virtual Machine (VM) on a Linux host. It includes steps on cleaning up Windows, configuring services, and sharing files between the host and VM. The text also discusses potential issues with running graphics-heavy applications and suggests using a dual boot for such tasks. Lastly, it emphasizes the importance of privacy and suggests ways to maintain it when using a VM, such as using a local account and disabling certain features.

Today we’re going to learn how to install Windows 11 inside Linux. To some of you, this could be an old topic. However, even if you’re familiar with some of the technology I will discuss today, it will be clear that Windows 11 introduces some complexities and it is a lot more difficult to do this than using Windows 10. The technology we’re going to use today is based on virtualization, which has come a long way over the years. Using the latest techniques in virtual machines, the performance of a guest operating system can be up to 95 to 99% of the speed of the host system, or what we refer to as bare metal.

Installing Windows 11 and Linux can be mostly a flawless experience and with a few limitations. You can be running Windows applications within your Linux host with barely a hiccup. The steps to install Windows 11 on Linux is not super simple, but it is something that a power user should be able to manage. Some of you might ask why we would want to install Windows 11 when Windows 10 is simpler. And yes, if Windows 10 can work for you. This is indeed a long term safe Solution to running Windows 10 even without updates. However, we also know that Some applications, notably TurboTax, will no longer run on Windows 10, so some of you will want to stick to Windows 11, albeit for just a few apps.

Using a VM to run Windows 11 is actually a simpler alternative than running Windows 11 and Linux in a dual boot scenario where you choose the operating system on boot. The reason this is complicated is that Windows cannot be trusted and without the steps I taught in a prior dual boot video, Windows can just willy nilly wipe your Linux install. Doing Windows Linux dual boot also wastes space on the hard drive as you have to leave reserved partition space for growth of each operating system. The biggest advantage of running Windows 11 in a VM is the that you can corral its many unsafe features and tame it so that it cannot control your computer.

You will always control it. You can shut down the AI features, limit access to the TPM and use only a local account to eliminate any Windows telemetry. As a part time use operating system, this will tick all the boxes. You can still have the performance and features of most of your apps and you can easily restore from backup if some dangers update its release by Microsoft. If you use a method of operation I call Immutable Windows. You can even be immune from malware when using Windows and safely have it managed by Linux. Let’s get started. Stay right there.

Technology we will use to do Windows 11 virtualization I will try to keep things simple. My host system will be Ubuntu 24.04. My machine is a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 carbon running Intel Lunar Lake from 2025. For virtualization we will use KMU KVM. Our VM GUI will be managed by Virtual Manager. We will also use a TPM emulator called SWTPM and a Ufe virtualization OVMF. These are pieces required by Windows 11. We will need two ISO files to install this. One is Windows 11 25H2 and the other is a Vert IO ISO which is a driver project from Fedora which is needed to optimize Windows.

There will be more and I will discuss those later. Just a brief note. While there may be other virtualization tools that some of you have experience with, that is not the tech I will be using. Suffice it to say that other tools will not work as easily with Windows 11, so there are reasons for these choices. So stick with what we will discuss here. Also, I will simplify this quite a bit. There are further optimizations in VM performance that you can get by tweaking drivers and so on, but given a gain of performance of less than 10%, it’s probably not important to focus on them right now.

Downloading the ISO the first CD image we need for installation, otherwise known as an ISO, is Windows 1125H2. You can get this directly from Microsoft at this link. I will leave the links and commands in the description or I will link a downloadable PDF later on. It is important to just get the ISO image from Microsoft. You do not need to create any other media. Just for your information, Windows 1125H2 is 7.7 gigabytes large. The next ISO we need is downloaded from fedoraple.org and here is the link. This is a direct link and my final file is called virtio win01285iso.

Just to keep things organized, I have a specific directory called ISO where I keep all my ISOs installing KMU KVM to install KMU kvm and all the associated VirtManager files and related utilities, go to Linux Terminal and cut and paste this command sudo apt update sudo apt install kmu kvm live virt Clients Live Virt Daemon System Virt Manager OVMF SWTPM SWTPM Tools virtio FSD bridge utils Just to make sure you know all the pieces being installed, we are installing kmokvm, the live Virt applications which support Vert Manager. OVMF is the UFE Emulator and SWTPM Tools is the TPM emulator.

Virtio FSD provides the tools for the optimization we need to do on Windows 11. Next we run this command so we don’t need to invoke sudo to run Virt Manager later on. Sudo user mod ag livevert dollar user Initializing a Virtual Machine in Virt Manager From File, select New Virtual Machine, then select Local Install Media and hit Forward. Then in the chosen ISO field I’m going to click on Browse. This will display the Locate ISO Media Volume window. Now for frequent use I have added pools of locations from my hard drive so I can find things quickly, the important ones being the ISO folder.

So I will hit the plus button and add that as a pool. Later I will use a fixed VM folder where I will place my VMs and I made that my VM pool. This is all optional by the way. This becomes more important when you’re running Virt manager remotely. I will select the Windows 1125 H2 ISO from my ISO pool. I’ve stored all my ISOs in that ISO folder and it should be detected as Windows 11 at the bottom and I will hit forward. Now you can select the memory you want to allocate to your VM and the number of CPUs you want for it.

I happen to have 32GB and 8 CPUs in my machine and I’ll be allocating 8GB and 4 CPUs to it later, depending on the amount of views you will put on the vm. You can adjust these settings by looking at Task Manager to see where bottlenecks are. Then I get to choose where to put the storage. Generally I would recommend 80gb for Windows 11 and in my case I’ve selected it to be stored in my VM pool area. When you hit the plus button, you can create a storage volume, give it a name, and allocate it the size that you want.

The format of a KMU VM is called QCOW2. Click on allocate entire Volume. Now this will then create the space on the hard drive and it will take some time to complete. It will then say Creating Storage Volume and wait for it to complete. After it completes you can select the created storage volume and in the next step, Setting up a new vm. Next, choose the name for your vm and check the box. Customize configuration before installation, let’s examine the settings for the vm under overview. Chipset should be q35 firmware ufe cpus check copy host cpu configuration memory enable shared memory cd rom1 will be the windows 25h2 ISO.

We need to add another cd rom for the virtio win ISO. Click on ard hardware storage select or create custom storage. Then choose the volume of the vertwin ISO file. Then under device type, select cd rom, then finish under tpm, choose emulated model crb and version 2.0. Now you can begin the windows installation. Windows 11 installation click on begin installation at the top, Select Language, select keyboard install Windows 11 and agree that everything will be deleted. Product key State I don’t have a product key. Select Installation Image which is Windows 11 Pro and accept license terms.

Select location to install Win11 and begin installing, Choose Country Keyboard Layout and then alternate Keyboard. Skip that. Next name the machine, Select Setup for Work or School. Sign in options, select Domain Join instead, enter your username, enter your password and then enter your three security questions. Choose privacy settings. Disable all. The. Next it will check for Windows updates. Install virtio win guest tools. After logging in, go to the second CD ROM drive and look for Virtio Win Guest Tools. Click on it, agree to license terms and install it. It should install several app. Sam Next resize the display.

Right click Display Settings and I set mine to 19, 20 by 10, 80 and 150%. Next go to Edge browser. Navigate to HTTPs winfsp.dev this is the site that has the Windows file system proxy. Download the installation file and install it. At this point I would download Brave browser and install it so I don’t have to deal with Edge again. And after installing it I will make it my default browser. Sam. Clean up Windows Now I remove the apps from the taskbar, Copilot, Microsoft Store, Outlook. I right click the taskbar to see taskbar settings. Then I disable widgets and Task view in Settings Apps, I Uninstall Copilot and OneDrive and whatever else you’d like to remove.

Configure Services Then I go to Start and type Services. This will show me the Services app and then in the Services app I look for Virtio FS and this is marked as Start manually. I set this to Start automatically or Start automatically delayed. Then I shut down Windows. The purpose of Virtio FS is that you can share the drive of your host system so it is easily accessible inside your vm and this makes it easy to pass files back and forth between the VM and Linux. By configuring this ahead of time, it will always be active.

Clean up the hardware CD ROM devices Then going back to Vert Manager, I click Edit the Virtual machine details. I click on the I button to see the details. What I want to do here is delete the CD ROM hardware because we don’t need those anymore. So I right click and select Remove Hardware and I do it for the two CD ROM hardware devices. Now I can restart Windows and it should now be in a permanent kind of setup. There are some things I would do to monitor it while I’m using Windows. I would periodically run Task Manager and see what the cpu, memory and disk activity is.

If your disk activity is very high, I recommend that you recreate your VM on an NVME drive and it will make a big difference. You can tweak the CPU and memory as you wish depending on which you spend more time on Windows vs Linux. Also for ease of use I would enable auto resize VM with Window always. When you are in full screen mode and you want to return back to a windowed vm, just move the mouse to the center top area of the screen and you will see an option to leave full screen mode. Sharing files between the host and VM to share the files between the VM and the Linux host, go back to Edit Virtual Machine settings, then select Add Hardware, choose File System then fill in the fields as shown here.

The driver should be virtio fs On Source path click on Browse then browse Local and point to the root folder you want to share. Then give the share a name. There’s no slashes in the name, just use the name only then hit Finish. Now when you start the Windows 11 VM when you go to File Manager you should see that share. If you don’t see the share it is because the service virtio FS hasn’t been started so make sure to check that. I originally set it to automatic delayed start just to make sure other services were running first, but you can manually force it to start immediately if needed.

Just be careful with this. Be aware that Linux files and Windows are not necessarily compatible. Apps that need advanced tweaking. While it is possible to run more advanced graphics dependent apps like Games and even DaVinci resolve on a Windows 11 VM I personally encountered problems with using Lunar Lake. In order to use a graphics heavy app like DaVinci Resolve you have to enable OpenGL and GPU Pass through and frankly that crashed for me using my Intel Lunar Lake with built in ARC igpu. I also researched that some games supposedly work well in a VM at 1080p resolution, but again this could be dependent on the type of GPU installed on the machine.

The new architecture of Intel Lunar Lake with its new ARC IGPU is not the most stable of all platforms for this at this time, so generally I would stick to dual boot for graphics heavy applications. However, for anything else, Windows 11 runs pretty normally and I imagine most apps should behave as expected. Windows 11 as a VM is not a new concept and likely many enterprises use this in production with Remote desktop immutable windows. Once you have a running instance of a Windows 11 VM, that instance is embodied in the QCOW2 file which we used as the storage for that VM.

In this example that is in my VM folder as Win11qcow2 you can make a copy of the original VM so you keep the original constant. What you would do is clone the original win 11qcow2 right click on the VM and select clone. Then select the name of the qcowal storage file. Here I just call it win 11 clone. Then next you will see the clone as your production file. This is what you would use every day, but depending on your intent you can then just delete the clone on a regular basis and then create a new copy of the clone, in which case you will be restoring the original when it was in its original state right after creation.

This means you can undo Windows updates and if you’re using it heavily for certain types of apps that can potentially expose you to malware like email, using a saved copy over and over ensures that malware cannot persist. TPM and Recall In a Windows 11 VM you are running TPM 2.0 only in emulation mode. This means that Microsoft’s ability to identify the machine using an endorsement key is eliminated. If you recreate a new virtual machine, it should have a new endorsement key. So in a VM this threat is non existent. Secondly, as I teach here, you install Windows using a local account.

At no point should you use a Microsoft account. Once you do, then the VM will be trackable on the Microsoft end and every time you turn it on, all the switches and lights will turn on at the Microsoft cloud to indicate that you’re online. When using a local account, that threat is also absent. If you ever make that mistake, like login to Xbox or the Microsoft Store, then I would delete that instance and start with a fresh copy from the original. Also, when using a local account, by default BitLocker is turned off and there’s no threat of bitlocker keys being forwarded to Microsoft for storage with your Microsoft account.

Finally, because There is no BitLocker and no Microsoft account by default, Windows Recall will also be naturally disabled. Thus, without having to do anything special, the threat of the see what you see technology is absent. As you can see, the VM solution defects Windows 11 quite a bit and it is no longer near as dangerous as it could have been. There are still tweaks you can do to remove various telemetry that occur between Windows and Microsoft, like crash report telemetry and such communications with hq. You can continue to tweak those and could be a never ending list, but that will be the subject of a future video or you can watch other videos on the topic by others Folks, if you’re serious about privacy, come join us at Braxme.

It’s the growing community where real privacy people hang out. No censorship, no nonsense. While you’re there, check out the tools we actually built and use ourselves. BraxMail Unlimited aliases, no IP leaks, Brax virtual phone, real anonymous numbers, bytesVPN no logs, PI hole DNS, no big unknown corporation, the Google Phones and more in the store. The Brax 3 phone second batch is open for pre order right now@braxtech.net the first batch sold shortly after release. Big thanks to everyone supporting us on patreon locals and YouTube membership tips. You keep this channel alive. See you next time.
[tr:tra].

See more of Rob Braxman Tech on their Public Channel and the MPN Rob Braxman Tech channel.