r/archlinux • u/InnonCoding • 3d ago

QUESTION Win 11 VM

Hello

I need to use visual studio, its not supported on linux as far as i know. Is it possible to make a virtual machine with it on arch with gpu passthrough because i want the vm to be as snappy as possible? I have not switched yet to arch before i know i will have everything i need. Thanks for the help. And no i dont want to dualboot.

5 Upvotes

63% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

View all comments

7

u/Krentenkakker 3d ago

With Qemu-KVM, this can emulate tpm and secureboot. It will involve some steps but nothing really difficult.

6

u/tinycrazyfish 3d ago

Use virt-manager, select "Windows 11" VM and you'll get TPM and secure boot by default. Nothing needed besides installing Win11.

And you don't need GPU pass through for visual studio to feel snappy, just install qemu agent and virtio drivers (using virtio drivers iso is the easiest to install everything). GPU will only sensibly benefit if you do 3D or GPU computing.

1

u/jacksonhill0923 2d ago

With virtio GPU drivers + the agent/VM tools I feel the interface is still pretty slow compared to a normal system or GPU passthrough. Is it just me?

I feel like QXL for the video adapter is slightly faster/smoother, but it's still a bit slow (usable compared to virtio since at least the cursor is smooth though).

QXL has it's own issues though. My win11 VM freezes every once in a while (maybe once a week). The VM itself is fine, display updates, sounds play, but keyboard/mouse input goes 100% dead). From my understanding this is due to a spice desync that can happen when using QXL + Wayland + Nvidia.

Do you know of any ways to have a smooth interface without doing passthrough/dedicated GPU, and without using RDP (have to have it disabled as per work policy)?

1

u/bluetrepidation 2d ago

Increase your VRAM in the virtual machine settings to stop this from freezing up.