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Last active October 16, 2023 02:29
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Virtualizing Windows 10 on Fedora 30

Virtualizing Windows 10 on Fedora 30

My experience virtualizing Windows 10 on a newerly installed and released Fedora 30 using GNOME Boxes, VirtualBox, and VMware Player, all available for free.

  • Make sure your hardware supports virtualization.
  • Enable virtualization capabilities in your BIOS.
  • Get a Windows 10 ISO from Microsoft's Download Windows 10 page. You may not be able to download the ISO directly from this URL in case you access it from a Windows computer, though this may easily be circumvented by changing your browser's user agent to one of a non-Windows computer. Make sure the ISO has been downloaded successfuly after it has finished.

GNOME Boxes

  • The software comes pre-installed and creation of a VM is easy. Graphical hardware acceleration is unavailable for Windows making it unusable except for basic tasks.

Issues

  • The software acquires complete control of your mouse when a newerly created VM is first run and does not let go. Restarting the software fixes the issue.

VirtualBox

  • The software is available in RPM Fusion's repositories and installation is easily accomplished through the package manager. VM creation is decently straight-forward.

Issues

  • The software fails to install its kernel modules due to a package conflict involving the package akmod-VirtualBox. Installing akmod-VirtualBox and the kernel headers with dnf's --best --allowerasing flags fixes the issue.

VMware Player

  • Installation occurs in the terminal and does not rely on the package manager. Creation of a VM is only slightly easier than VirtualBox.
  • Graphical hardware acceleration is available but experimental and disabled by default for Intel integrated GPUs.

Resources

Issues

  • Installation script fails to initialize user interface. Installing ncurses-compat-libs through the package manager fixes the issue.
  • The software cannot find kernel headers. Installing the kernel-devel package fixes the issue.
  • The software is unable to build its kernel modules. Installing gcc and make packages fixes the issue.
  • The software is unable to update one of its VMware Tools component displaying an error message about being unable to copy the user's Xauthority file. Switching from a Wayland enviroment to X fixes the issue.
  • Install VMware Tools... is greyed out while logged in to Windows. Removing the floppy device from the VM and directly using the VMware Tools ISO located at /usr/lib/vmware/isoimages/windows.iso for the CD/DVD device fixes the issue.
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