Gotta GSD, Don’t Wanna Buy Windows, Here’s Some Options!

Ok, again, I’ve sat down to get some shit done and I immediately stumble into this one strange scenario where I need a Windows machine. I don’t want to buy Windows. I rarely use it. I just need to do this one thing. I don’t want to use Windows on a regular basis. I’m happy with Linux, and a little MacOS usage here and there. But here is this brick wall roadblock for this one task I need to do on Windows.

What a bummer! But there’s an easy way Microsoft has setup to help us out with these scenarios!

Thank goodness.

If you want to test out a development environment, there’s a location here where you can go download a time limited VM of your choice. This machine image is great because they’ve already got things setup with;

• Visual Studio 2019
• Visual Studio Code
• Windows 10 SDK
• UWP
• .NET Desktop
• Azure workflows enabled
• Windows Subsystem for Linux w/ Ubuntu. Not that I’d need this, but ya know, it’s hugely useful on Windows.
• Dev mode & bash enabled.

That image is all groovy. No Java pun intended. But if you want a slightly slimmer image for just testing out Microsoft browser stuff, like MS Edge or older Internet Explorer versions, check out these images.

With both of these options the versions are time limited, to something like 90 days. The cool thing is though, that’ll give you enough time to test out most things or troubleshoot any .NET Windows proprietary code bits!

The other great thing is they offer the images in multiple different formats too; Virtual Box, VMware, and others.

Hope these are helpful to ya, enjoy!