Guide updated to use the official installation .iso from Microsoft, which finally became available in Dec. 2024! For the VHDX disk image based guide check an earlier version of this gist.
When following this guide on a host not capable of aarch64 virtualization, replace -cpu host -accel kvm
with -cpu max
.
- Download the installation .iso from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11arm64. Win11_24H2_EnglishInternational_Arm64.iso is known to work.
- Download the the latest virtio-win.iso from https://fedorapeople.org/groups/virt/virtio-win/direct-downloads/latest-virtio/.
- Create a disk image for the Windows installation:
qemu-img create -f qcow2 win11.qcow2 25G
- Start the installation with generic (ramfb for display, usb-storage for .isos) as well as virtio (virtio-gpu-pci, virtio-block) devices: `qemu-system-aarch64 -M virt -cpu host -accel kvm -m 4G -smp 4 -device ramfb -device virtio-gpu-pci -bios /usr/share/qemu/qemu-uefi-aarch64.bin -device qemu-xhci -device usb-kbd -dev