Member Avatar for md65381

how to Implement a Virtual Machine (VM) of Windows on Linux platform and also instal all features of windows on it. for the user it should look alike windows but actually performing his applications on linux platform

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In response to : three practical approaches depend on the actual goal — full Windows feature parity, only running specific Windows apps, or simply giving users a familiar Windows-like desktop.

If full Windows compatibility is required (Office, proprietary trading apps, device drivers, etc.), host a real Windows VM. For best performance use KVM/QEMU + libvirt (virt-manager) or VMware; VirtualBox is simpler for quick tests. Essential steps: enable VT‑x/AMD‑V in BIOS/UEFI, create a virtual disk, attach the Windows ISO, install Windows, then install the hypervisor’s guest drivers/tools (Guest Additions / VMware Tools / virtio-win) so graphics, disk and networking run efficiently. Example commands to create a qcow2 image and start a managed install:

qemu-img create -f qcow2 /var/lib/libvirt/images/win10.qcow2 50G

virt-install --name win10 --ram 8192 --vcpus 4 --disk path=/var/lib/libvirt/images/win10.qcow2,format=qcow2 \
  --os-type=windows --os-variant=win10 --cdrom=/path/to/Win10.iso --network network=default --graphics spice

Tune CPU/RAM, use virtio devices for disk/network, and choose NAT vs bridged networking depending on whether the VM needs LAN visibility.

For lighter needs, run Windows applications directly on Linux with Wine (or commercial CrossOver) and front‑ends like PlayOnLinux or Bottles; as notes, well‑written apps often run fine, but some (especially those needing drivers or low‑level OS hooks) will not.

Advanced options: GPU passthrough (VFIO) gives near‑native graphics but requires separate GPU, IOMMU support and careful host/guest setup. Always keep offline backups (qcow2 snapshots are convenient but not a substitute for full image backups) and remember a valid Windows license is still required for a VM. For purely cosmetic familiarity, a Windows‑skinned KDE/Cinnamon desktop is the fastest path, as suggested.

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Member Avatar for mike_2000_17

Here is a good step-by-step tutorial (for Windows XP, but I'm sure you can figure out how to do other versions too).

for the user it should look alike windows but actually performing his applications on linux platform

There are actually many versions of Linux that do look or can look very familiar to Windows users. And many windows applications can run in Wine. The KDE-based distributions (with Plasma desktop) can actually be customized to look almost identical to any version of Windows (from win95 to win7) or any version of Mac OSX, at least, on the surface (look and feel of the desktop). So, I think that what corresponds better to the description of "looks like Windows but is Linux" are one those Windows-looking Linux distributions, not Windows running in a VM inside Linux. The added bonus is that you don't have to pay for all the software that you would normally use in Windows (unless it is specialized software, most of which are also available for Linux nowadays).

Member Avatar for rubberman

I run a number of Windows applications with Wine on my Linux machines, and if they are cleanly written they work just fine. Many are not and won't run well in Wine. In that case, either you find a Linux equivalent, or run a real Windows OS in a virtual machine, which I also do. For example, my main software engineering tool, Sparx Enterprise Architect, runs perfectly with Wine, but my Fidelity stock/options trading software will only run in a real Windows environment. Fortunately, it still runs on XP, so I haven't had to pay for the XP->Win7 upgrade! :-)

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