Virtual machines for Windows 11 released from time to time by Microsoft are a good option for developers, students, and software programming enthusiasts to get free access to the “Windows 11 Development Environment” or WDE.
This environment is available in four variants to cover the main hypervisors in virtualization: VMWare, Hyper-V Gen2, Parallels and VirtualBox . Virtual machines are pre-built and do not require any additional configuration. After powering on the virtual machine , you will have available:
- Windows 11 Enterprise SKU. (Latest build 22621.1702 including the May 2023 update)
- Visual Studio 2022 Community Edition, with UWP, .NET Desktop, Azure, and Windows Apps SDK for C# workloads enabled.
- Windows Subsystem for Linux with Ubuntu pre-installed.
- Windows Terminal installed.
- Developer mode enabled.
The license to use Windows 11 is free for a certain time , specifically, the latest ones published until August 9, 2023. If the evaluation period expires and you have not activated it with a valid license, the desktop wallpaper will become black, you will see a persistent desktop notification that the system is non-genuine and the computer will shut down every hour.
In any case, they serve to fully assess (or get to know it if you have concerns) this Windows development environment, taking into account that you can customize the system and use all its capabilities during the specified period. Furthermore, all of the listed developer tools are available without the need for additional installations. And if simply, like many of us, you are still on Windows 10 and want to see the status of Windows 11, here is an option to see the system with a free license.
You can download Windows 11 virtual machines from Microsoft from the Windows Developer Center .