Developers have a new tool from Microsoft to help them in creating Windows applications. They now have the option of downloading a Windows 11 Enterprise virtual machine for free.
There are four virtualization software options available for the VM.
Namely, VMware, Hyper-V, VirtualBox, and Parallels.
As Microsoft puts it, this new package allows developers to start building Windows applications quickly by using a virtual machine with the latest version of Windows, associated developer tools, SDKs, and samples ready to go.
The evaluation virtual machine includes the following:
- Window 11 Enterprise (evaluation)
- Windows 10 SDK, version 2004 (10.0.19041.0)
- Visual Studio 2019 (latest as of 10/09/21) with the UWP, .NET desktop, and Azure workflows enabled and also includes the Windows Template Studio extension
- Visual Studio Code (latest as of 10/09/21)
- Windows Subsystem for Linux enabled with Ubuntu installed
- Developer mode enabled
- Windows Terminal installed
Solid stuff.
As ZDNet notes, however, the Microsoft page is incorrectly titled “Get a Windows 10 development environment”, as the it actually allows you to download a Windows 11 Enterprise virtual machine. But this may be updated in due time.
Speaking of due time, since this is an evaluation release, the Windows 11 Enterprise VM will expire on January 9, 2022.
You can grab the 20GB download from the link above.
