Become a Amateur Radio VM Wizard
Why do we need this?
As much as I have tried to bin Windows 10/11 some programs may not be available on linux, such as proprietary radio programming software, Yaesu, Icom, OpenGD77
Also it is useful for trying out different operating systems without binning your main install
We need a host Operating System, we could use VMWare but here is a friendlier solution if you are an existing Linux user.
I will be using Linux Mint 22.3 but most debian/Ubuntu based operating systems will be the same
We’ll install virt-manager and Qemu, these are much more versatile than VirtualBox, especially for USB pass-through which will allow your OS to use any USB device.
Preparation and building your Virtual Machine
Build a normal Linux Mint or Ubuntu distro environment and update and upgrade sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
Install Qemu and virt-manager sudo apt install qemu-system qemu-kvm virt-manager libvirt-daemon-system
If you intend to install more than one OS do steps 4 to 8 otherwise goto step 9
create a folder to store your ISOs on mkdir /ISO
Create a folder or ideally a partition to story your VMs on, this can be rebuilt from if your main Virtual Manager installation fails
To do this use gparted to create a partition as ext4 (BTRFS caused free space reporting issues)
Open the disks app, select the partition you just created, click the gear icon for that partition. Select Mount Options, untick session defaults. In the mount point field change the location to where the VMS folder is located e.g. /home/ralph/VMS click ok
mount the drive by clicking the play icon then enter systemctl daemon-reload and sudo mount -a to the terminal
If you are installing any Windows OS download the latest virt-io drivers from https://fedorapeople.org/groups/virt/virtio-win/direct-downloads/archive-virtio/?C=M;O=D
So allow virtual manager the correct permissions type sudo chown $USER:$USER /var/run/libvirt/libvirt-sock
Open virt-manager
To create a new virtual machine, click file, new virtual machine, local install media, select the ISO to install from
You may need to add a path to use, then browse local to find the ISO, click choose volume
Choose the operating system you are installing
Set the memory and cpu that you want to allocate
To set the storage, either create a disk image at the default location or,
Select or create custom storage (especially if you did steps 4-8), click manage and select a size and location
Name the VM profile, click finish to start the VM
Follow the OS instructions to install it, carry out updates if required.
If you installed Windows in virt-manager click the (i) logo and select SATA CDROM1, browse to the virt-io-win0.xxx.iso that you downloaded
In windows open the CD drive (D:), double click on the virtio-win-guest-tools executable, install using the defaults
Open device manager, check that display, sound, and network drivers are installed, if not update the drivers by searching the CDrom.
Set the display resolution by right clicking the desktop, select the correct display resolution for your screen.