Qemu Windows 10

Botstrap to run Windows 10 on your Linux machine using Qemu (with QXL driver and external bridged network).

Get started

1. Create Windows 10 folder and put there virtual drive. It's recommended 50G and more for Windows 10.

mkdir -p ~/qemu/win10
cd ~/qemu/win10
qemu-img create win10.img 50G

2. Download Windows 10 ISO image at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10ISO For a better perfomance use VitIO drivers for Windows from Fedora Project. Download ISO image at https://fedorapeople.org/groups/virt/virtio-win/direct-downloads/archive-virtio/.

Install Windows 10

win10.sh -cdrom /path/to/windows10/Win10_English_x64.iso -drive file=/path/to/VirtIO_Win_Drivers/virtio-win-0.1.149.iso,index=3,media=cdrom

SPICE

This project use SPICE and QXl. Install QXl Driver and SPICE Agent on the guest to provide enhanced SPICE integration and performance. Download it at https://www.spice-space.org/download.html.

Use spicy to connect to virtual machine.

spicy -h 127.0.0.1 -p 5900

Networking

Is uses "external networking" scheme with bridged network. Configure bridge on your host.

sudo ip add name br0 type bridge
sudo ip set eth0 master br0

Do not forget to disable dhcp on eth0 intarface and release existing address. You can use iproute2 or netctl to create bridge and manage network connections. Read mare at Arch Wiki.

This project use QEMU HelperNetworking. It creates a tap file descriptor, attaches it to a bridge, and passes it back to QEMU. This helper runs with higher privileges and allows QEMU to be invoked as a non-privileged user.

Configure it according recomendations.

sudo chmod u+s /usr/lib/qemu/qemu-bridge-helper

At /etc/qemu/bridge.conf

allow br0

Accept forward traffic at bridge by adding iptables rule:

sudo iptables -I FORWARD -m physdev --physdev-is-bridged -j ACCEPT

You can manage tap interfaces using shell scripts qemu-ifup and qemu-ifdown. More at Arch Wiki.