The nature of my VM is to be ephemeral and run Win11 unlicenced. Of course you do not need to take this route and you can find Win11 license vendors online (Grey market, or right from Microsoft).
Fwiw, adjusting speed, etc. was much easier than this. I looked at the icons of the default apps that the ubuntu package had installed on the toolbar, and i clicked the one that graphically resembled the system settings app in Windows. Then i scrolled to the mouse/touchpad entry, and made selections in an obvious way.
I was surprised at the wealth of useful apps that were there by default. My husband said, “Ubuntu isn’t minimalist”. They were mostly apps i might use, like a libreoffice word processor, Firefox, system settings, a media player …
I will lose some functionality if i switch. Netflix may have restored the ability to download movies in its Windows app, for instance. There’s not a Netflix app in Ubuntu. I may not be able to stream at as high a video quality. (But it’s a small screen, so i probably don’t care.) I may or may not resolve the “touchpad didn’t move smoothly” issue with better drivers. (That might be a deal breaker, but the odds of succeeding are good enough that I’m going to try.) Obviously, I’ll lose Excel on this laptop. If this were my only laptop, that would be a deal breaker. My husband mostly uses Linux, but dual boots in Windows so he can use commercial tax software.
But so far, it’s looking pretty promising.
I think I mentioned this in an earlier post, but I really don’t see how running Windows in a VM using Linux solves any of the complaints about Win11 that started this thread. I have a couple machines where I’ve done this and it just isn’t the answer. It’s true that I use Win11 installations that are activated, and so I give up some privacy even in the VM, but overall the system resources are stretched more and I do have driver integration issues. Plus, it’s sort of a pain. I’m much better off simply using a basic Win11 machine when I need Windows…which I often do.
To be fair, I run (several) NAS units and so it’s easy for me to just switch laptops and still have access to the same resources on my local network, but trying to stick to a single laptop running Linux and then Win10/11 in a VM is just more overhead that I don’t need. Running Win11 in a VM certainly doesn’t IMPROVE Win11 significantly.
I am going to dual boot to see if i can be happy with Linux, without destroying the windows installation i have. I don’t expect to do it as a long term thing.
And i am keeping a Windows machine for gaming.
My husband dual boots because he had one app he needs to use once a year (tax software). The advantage to him is that it minimizes the amount of time he needs to spend in Windows. Mostly, he does his computer stuff in Linux.
But i agree that if you need to use stuff that only runs in Windows on a regular basis, you will likely be happier using a computer that runs Windows.
I cannot speak to any one else, but my concerns about Win11 are privacy related. Isolating my Win11 to an ephemeral VM eliminates the majority of my privacy concerns. I have Win11 in a bottle in case I need it, like with any other Win version or Linux distro.
My recommendations to others would be to use VMs to solve any compatibility issue you run across but (and it serves right for me to repeat this three times now) I always recommend having the most up-to-date OS (Win11, Linux, FreeBSD, etc) installed on your bare metal machine.
VMs are for compatibility and mitigating the risks of running old OS’s (imo).
You have mentioned your tax prep software several times in this thread and other rants about Win 11.
I understand that Canadian tax prep software is not the same as US. But FYI …
Right now the main US vendors are in the middle of moving from having the app installed on your PC to having the app be their website. You still keep your tax data file on your PC from year to year. But the app only needs a browser locally. So probably compatible w your older machine(s).
As a separate matter, the ferment in the US tax prep industry means that pretty much every vendor can consume last year’s data file from all their major competitive products. Making the transition easier.
Lastly, I’ve found that my taxes are vastly simpler now in retirement than they used to be. So that if I did choose to use a new app this year, and my old data is not importable, it really wouldn’t be much of a burden. I’ve been threatening to change vendors for awhile now, and I think this year will be the one, compatibility be damned. I’d be moving for modernization of the app, and to give the finger to my current bloated profiteering vendor, not due to my OS or hardware. But it amounts to the same move you might make albeit for different reasons.
You might find a similar path of lesser resistance.
That’s a good point. But this particular software I really like and has been accurate enough that my assessments have usually been exactly what I filed, to the penny. And they don’t (yet) offer an online browser-based version.
It may be awhile before they do, if ever, because their main business is corporate tax accounting so their consumer product is kind of a throw-away freebie, but it’s quality software that is Netfile certified every year. It used to be absolutely free but now there’s a nominal charge if your filed taxable income is above a certain threshold. It’s a great company, based in Ottawa.
For the last several years I’ve been using freetaxusa.com from my browser within Linux and not had any problems. Prior to that I used TurboTax from a Windows VM. The only problem with that was the yearly $40-80 I had to pay for TurboTax.
I’d been paying for and using VMware Workstation for 25 years or something, but just recently I switched to libvirt, virt-manager, and QEMU. Mostly, the custom kernel modules for VMware were giving me problems, and bugs in Workstation were bothering me. Ironic to move away from Workstation now that it is free to use.
I require real Windows infrequently enough (maybe a few times per month) that a VM does what I need.
Glad it was easy. The thing I need real Windows for the most is writing out detailed, step by step instructions for people, and I was a bit disturbed I couldn’t do that for you to adjust the mouse settings.
Every year the Canada Revenue Agency provides Canadians with a list of government approved software. Here is the Certified tax software for 2024. All of them have free options based on your tax situation.
If you are filing one form, fine; but if you are doing 10’s of tax returns it’s more likely you are running a tax filing business so most software wants to charge for that.
Thanks for that list! My favoured software (StudioTax) is on their list, of course. I have no intention of changing but it’s nice to see other options. I have such fond memories of Netfiling with StudioTax in prior years and getting windfalls of money! 
Which of course has nothing to do with the software itself, except that it makes it easy to file. It forms an association in the brain – every time I file a tax return, I get Big Money in the mail!
I wonder if it might run under WINE / Crossover? Instead of a full blown VM, those reimplement Windows API calls and let you run Windows apps straight in Linux – no Windows install or license needed at all. It won’t work with all apps, however, especially those with DRM, namely Microsoft Office.
But generally I agree with @puzzlegal here… your app needs should determine your operating system, not the other way around. Windows has its annoyances but they can mostly be turned off, and the rest is just a matter of training yourself to accept the pervasive oppression of modern software mediocrity. Linux has its quirks too. Alas.
Out of an excess of curiosity, I just tested StudioTax 2025 on Crossover (which is a GUI wrapper around WINE), and unfortunately it just crashes at startup. Other users reported older versions up to 2024 working though. From the log files, it seems like this may be a problem with my specific computer (Apple Silicon Mac), and it’s possible it would work better in Linux on PC hardware. But it’s still quite a hassle compared to just running it on Windows.
Even PCGamer is recommending Linux now: I'm brave enough to say it: Linux is good now, and if you want to feel like you actually own your PC, make 2026 the year of Linux on (your) desktop | PC Gamer
Very cool to see.
With the move to apps and web apps, I’ve found a cheap Chromebook is the easiest way to move away from Windows. However, I do a lot with electronic instrument interfacing and music production and those apps rely on MacOS or Windows. Trying to switch to Linux is an exercise in frustration.
I have successfully run audio-intensive programs and DAWs under Linux using both the Jack and Pipewire drivers; worked fine after setting everything up.
I don’t connect directly to instruments, but i do a lot of sound processing in audacity, which has a version that runs natively in Linux.
One potential advantage to running windows inside a VM on a linux host, at least an advantage over dual booting is that Windows Update loves to break dual boot setups.
This is not a switch from Windows to Linux, but from US (mainly Windows) to non-US (mainly Open Source, in particular openDesk) but it is worth a mention:
“Given the circumstances, we must reduce dependencies and strengthen the technological autonomy of the Court – even if this is expensive, inefficient and inconvenient in the short term,” said ICC IT manager Osvaldo Zavala Giler
The ICC is not the first public institution to ditch Microsoft products.
In April, the German Army announced it had signed a seven-year-contract with ZenDis for openDesk.
In September, the Austrian Army said it was replacing Microsoft Office with the Germany-based open-source LibreOffice programme suite.
Perhaps this would fit better in the Schadenfreude about things happening to trump and his enablers or the Clusterfuck thread?
Installing Ubuntu to dial boot with Windows now. I would never have managed this without my husband’s help. I had to disable bitlocker and something called optane before it would work. (I could have destructively overwritten the whole disk, but didn’t want to.) Doing those things wasn’t too hard, but knowing it was a thing to do was definitely beyond me.
The symptom that i had to do something was that it didn’t give me an option to install Linux alongside Windows. Once i unencrypted the hard drive and turned the other things off, there was an option to install it side by side, and a toggle for how much space i wanted in the Linux partition.