/windows-10-pro

Windows 10 Pro virtual machine (VM) ....so I can do the few remaining tasks that requires a Microsoft OS

Windows 10 Pro on Linux

With few exceptions, I have abandon MicroSoft Windows OS for Linux. I do fined an occasional need for MS Windows for some odd MS Windows program I may wish to run, but the only constant need is filing my annual income tax using TurboTax. When it comes to Linux, you have a few options to consider to fill in for the Windows program void. The specific options I explored for TurboTax tax filing:

  1. Native Linux - In some cases, you can find Linux programs that claim some equivalency to the MS Windows version. There happens to be at least one such package for filling taxes.
  2. Bottles / Wine - Wine is a compatibility layer capable of running Windows applications on Linux. Instead of simulating internal Windows logic like a virtual machine or emulator, Wine translates Windows API calls into Linux calls on-the-fly. Bottles is a wrapper around Wine, simplifying and automating some task.
  3. Proxmox - Proxmox is an open-source, Type 1 hypervisor that comes as a Debian-based Linux distribution. With Proxmox, users can experience a hypervisor that can integrate Linux containers (LXC), KVM hypervisor virtual machines, networking functionality, and software-defined storage in a unified platform. (Windows 10 downloads required).
  4. Vagrant/VirtualBox - Oracle VM VirtualBox is a type-2 hypervisor for x86 virtualization package supporting a large number of guest operating systems. Vagrant is a wrapper around VirtualBox that provides some portability across many hypervisors like VirtualBox, KVM, Hyper-V, VMware, etc. Pre-built VM are provided, including for MicoSoft Windows (e.g. gusztavvargadr/windows-10).

The solutions Proxmox and Vagrant/VituralBox worked well for me, and I settled in on using the later.

NOTE: Beware of the "Guru Meditation" error. This is a VirtualBox error that I got, and in my case, it was cause by a incompatibility between VirtualBox and KVM. The solution was to remove KVM, or at least stop its operations temporarily. See "Virtualbox Guru Meditation Critical Error In Linux".


Windows 10 Pro VM

Now that multiple Vagrant boxes are available for Windows 10 (e.g. Vagrant Cloud repository baunegaard/win10pro-en), I have no need to build my own Vagrant box. This Vagrant box is setup such that it can share the directory in which the vagrant command is executed. This is great so I can write/read any files I need via this shared directory.

My plan is to load this Windows 11 VM with TurboTax and file my taxes. My TurboTax is on a CD-ROM, therefore I want to load that software directly from the CD. To do this, I need the CD/DVD optical reader on my host computer to share with the MS Windows 10 guest VM.

Creating the Windows 10 VM Vagrantfile

Using the Vagrant base box baunegaard/win10pro-en, I need to create a Vagrantfile to meet my needs stated above. To derive the Vagrantfile, I experimented with provisioning VirtualBox directly using VBoxManage and leveraged the learnings from jeffskinnerbox / Windows-10-Vagrant-Box.

Sources used to understand what was needed: