If you run Windows 11 using QEMU/KVM, or you may need to, you should read this item from SysGuides. It’s the most comprehensive tutorial on installing any release of Windows 11 I’ve ever seen, and it focuses on Windows 11 25H2 (the most current release at this writing). I used it to set up a Windows 11 25H2 VM on my Garuda Linux system with the thought that at some point I may remove my Windows 11 bare metal installation and use the VM, but for the most part, I wanted to see how well the author has done with making this topic easy to understand, and I’m very impressed!
SysGuides also offers a comprehensive selection of QEMU/KVM VM installation tutorials, so if you use VMs for any OS/distribution, or want to set one up, check out what they have to offer.
I had a quick “gander” (perusal) of the site - it’s good…
But I’ve previously installed Win11 (Tiny11 I think) and Windows Server 2025 - and I found using virt-manager to do it all was as intuitive - and - as easy - as using VirtualBox… I’ve messed with most of the vitualization “front ends” - e.g. VMware ESX, vCenter and vSphere, Oracle VM for x86 (XEN hypervisor - completely unrelated to VirtualBox) - Red Hat KVM, and ProxMox… They’re all pretty much of a “muchness”…
Oops - nearly forgot one - “UTM” for Apple (you can even use it on iOS - e.g. iPad - I wouldn’t recommend trying it on an iPhone) - UTM is basically a frontend for deploying QEMU VMs on MacOS (also iOS) - takes all the heavy lifting out of stuff - they have a ready made VM that emulates a Sparc CPU with Solaris 8 pre-installed… I managed to clone it and make it install Solaris 9 for Sparc too!
Don’t think I’ll ever go back to VirtualBox…
And by “gander” - I mean “TL ; DR” - it was too long, and I didn’t read it all… I’m sure it would be helpful to new users - looks like a valuable resource…
I didn’t scroll down far enough to discover if there were alternatives to using virt-manager (i.e. using the shell and CLI)…
I do a tiny bit of stuff with KVM in the shell for my job - but - I’d like to learn more… So much to learn - i.e. QEMU is a whole book on its own - and probably pre-dates KVM itself (it’s an emulator - KVM is a hypervisor)…
I noticed that, but I mostly posted the site for those who want to switch to any GNU/Linux distribution, but still need Windows for some purpose or other. So far, Windows seems to be working well in my new VM, although downloads are significantly slower than my bare-metal Windows installation. I’m suspecting that it has something to do with the fact that I have a Wi-Fi-6 USB3 adapter on my bare-metal Windows system, while I’m using the Ethernet-bridge QEMU/KVM uses for Internet access. I’m going to try setting up a hardware pass-thru for adapter in the VM’s configuration to see if the Internet connection runs any faster.
There is a tutorial for setting up a GNU/Linux distribution in the CLI, but that Windows 11 tutorial only gives info for virt-manager, not the CLI. I think I’ll try my hand at setting up a GNU/Linux VM using the CLI tutorial. It might be fun to learn how to do that, and who knows, if I can get comfortable enough with managing QEMU/KVM VMs in the CLI, I might even be able to figure out how to do all the configuration customization’s specific to a Windows 11 VM that help it run faster and more smoothly. If I do, I’ll try to remember to put up a post here,
Yeah - I already knew about “virsh”… But how do you use it? Yeah - I could maybe type “man virsh” or even “virsh --help” but I’d rather see practical real world examples…
i.e. I knew there was virsh, and other cli tools - but HOW DO YOU USE THEM? That’s what I’m interested in - a dummy’s guide to KVM for the CLI… Doesn’t mean I’m going to do it tomorrow, or next week, or even any time in 2026… But it’s on my “radar”
I’ve used “virsh” to list installed VMs, and running VM’s - but there are KVM gurus who stand stuff up 100% from the CLI… That’s what I’m interested…
I saw a tute 5+ years ago about using QEMU to stand up and emulate a PowerPC system to install IBM AIX (running QEMU on FreeBSD) - yeah that’s not KVM - KVM can’t do anything other than x86 / i386 / i686 / x86_64… Was intrigued… and hadn’t realised some 15 years ago - I’d been using QEMU CLI tools to manage virtual LUNS for stuff like OVM…
I have a document… pdf I think.
Will search for it tomorrow. It came from @Rosika.
I know what you mean..?.. examples are more enlightening than words.
Found it on github
There is another pdf in that directory that might be interesting too.
