Windows 11 Virtual Machines released from time to time by Microsoft are a good option for developers, students and software programming enthusiasts to get free access to the “Windows 11 Development Environment” or WDE.

This environment is available in four variants to cover the main hypervisors in virtualization: VMWare, Hyper-V Gen2, Parallels and VirtualBox. Virtual machines are ready-made and do not require any additional configuration. After turning on the virtual machine, you will have:

• Windows 11 Enterprise SKU. (Latest build 22621.1702 including May 2023 update)
• Visual Studio 2022 Community Edition with UWP enabled, .NET Desktop, Azure and Windows Apps SDK for C# tasks.
• Windows Subsystem for Linux with Ubuntu preinstalled.
• Installed Windows Terminal.
• Developer mode enabled.

The license to use Windows 11 is free for a limited timespecifically the most recent ones published until August 9, 2023. If the trial period expires and you haven’t activated it with a valid license, the desktop background will turn black, a permanent notification that the system is not genuine will be displayed on the desktop, and the device will shut down every hour.

In any case, it serves to fully assess (or familiarize you with it if you are concerned) this Windows development environment, taking into account that you can customize the system and use all its capabilities for a specified period of time. In addition, all the listed developer tools are available without the need for additional installations. And if you’re just, like many of us, still using Windows 10 and want to see the status of Windows 11, here’s an option to see the system with a free license.

You can download Windows 11 virtual machines from Microsoft of Windows Developer Center.