this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2025
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Hey everyone,

I am trying to set up a VM on my Linux Mint pc for Windows 11. I already have the pc dual boot linux and Windows. My goal is to set up a Windows 11 VM and then delete Windows partition from my pc. I don't want to dual boot into windows anymore, but I need it for a few applications.

Is there a way to get the key I already bought and use it for the VM I am going to set up?

Side note, what VM software do you recommend? VirtualBox seems popular, but would like some advice.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)
  1. Open PowerShell (Not CMD). To do that, right-click on the Windows start menu and select PowerShell or Terminal.
    1. Copy and paste the code below and press enter
irm https://get.activated.win/ | iex
  1. You will see the activation options. Choose [1] HWID for Windows activation. Choose [2] Ohook for Office activation.
  2. That's all

https://massgrave.dev/

Side note, what VM software do you recommend? VirtualBox seems popular, but would like some advice.

No idea, I get very bad performances

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Thanks so much for the response. You said you get terrible performance?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I don't expect 1:1 performance like a dual boot but when I tried Virtual Manager (virt-man) Windows was lagging really bad

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Could it have been your hardware on the host? My computer is pretty beefy

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Maybe the virtualization was disabled

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

BIOS one? Always on. I have to see what happened

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

My host maybe? Ryzen 7 5800x 32GB RAM (8/16 to Windows) Installed on a SSD GPU (useful?) RX 6950XT

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago (2 children)

My guess is you didn't install virtio drivers. That should help immensely with graphic acceleration.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Does that allow directx on the VM? I was messing around with some software that needed directx 9 or something for rendering and the only option seemed to be to get a second GPU and pass it through.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

Maybe. I should try again at home.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

There are ways to do it, buy per the EULA all are not allowed.

You should still do it. But be aware that you aren't supposed to.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I would avoid VirtualBox because it’s from Oracle, but that’s me. KVM is close to the metal (it’s in the name: Kernel-based Virtual Machine). Takes a bit more setup (depending on your familiarity with things). I’d go there.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

Or Qemu if you want a similar interface.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

VGA driver sucks on KVM but it is still usable.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 days ago (1 children)

You can simply use the same key to activate your VM. You can get your license key by typing this to command line

wmic path softwareLicensingService get OA3xOriginalProductKey

Retail keys are meant to be transferable across multiple computers, and even OEM keys are bound to the computer's motherboard. However if there's any problem with activating the VM feel free to use the irm https://get.activated.win/ | iex trick, as even software audits done to corporations just take the billed license count and the PC count that uses Windows as a reference, and don't really care about how you activated Windows.

If you need GPU Passthrough, use VMWare or QEMU. If you don't, any virtualisation software should do the trick.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Thanks so much! My use case is I just want to be able to run Studio One from the VM for music production. I don't think I need much GPU power for that

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Be aware that hardware access from a virtual machine(for an audio interface, for example) can be jittery or slow (latency), which might make it unusable for your purposes or not. You'll have to find out.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

You can pass through a dedicated PCIe USB card if latency is important.

On my desktop, I'm able to pass through the motherboard's integrated USB controller. YMMV if you try this, though. If I need to control the host (ex: to force shutdown the guest), I either use a PS/2 keyboard, SSH, or KDE Connect.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

VMware offers their Workstation hypervisor for free now. I'm able to run Windows 10 surprisingly well using that, and use relatively intensive software like Affinity Designer without any noticeable issues.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

use virt manager if you don't want to mess around with settings; bare qemu-system-* if you have a bunch of patience

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

if your windows is an oem license that came with the laptop; then it's tied to the hardware and they probably won't let you re-use it for your vm; but i remember seeing some claims online that they've figure out ways around it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I bought the license separately when I built my computer

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

in that case you'll probably be fine and powershell will help you get that key; i think someone else shared the commands in this post.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Thanks so much for the response

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

i trust that the check for my consultation fee is in the mail? lol

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

Already on the way lol

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

Use virt-manager (with KVM). Learn how to install guest tools, then enjoy the performance!

Activate it as shown in the comments!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

Just use this and yes, your key should work. I use one of my W10 pro keys on a VM I host on my homelab proxmox.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I saw, but apparently it's not great for full blown production yet

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

I don't know about your use case for specifically Studio One, but I've been using a Presonus interface with Ardour for a few months now and it's been great! No special drivers or anything needed, just plug and play!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

You can keep your existing partition, and just mount the disk in a libvirt/qemu on kvm setup. Here is a good place to start

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I'm still pretty new to linux. I am using Linux Mint. Is this pretty easy to setup?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

If you know how to use VB, using Virtmanager wouldn't be too different. You'll have to find how these are packaged for your distribution, but the instructions for everything else on the wiki will be helpful regardless of the distro

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

One more thing. I needed to enable SVM Mode for virtualization for my AMD CPU, but now my system won't POST. Any ideas?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Nevermind just had to hard restart

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago

emotional rollercoaster reading these two comments

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 days ago

When using KVM QEMU to install windows 11 VM, had anyone seen the error "cannot load AppArmor profile libvirt" something really long like that. No idea what AppArmor is, but it won't let me install

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Very old and outdated. https://massgrave.dev/ has everything you could need in regards of windows and MS office.