Developers and enthusiasts who want to test Windows 11 and its dev tools can download the latest Windows 11 Development Environment (WDE) release, also known as “Free Windows 11 Virtual Machines from Microsoft,” from the official web From the site. Microsoft has bumped its virtual machines to version 2304 and set an expiration date of July 18, 2023.
The Windows 11 development environment includes everything a developer might need to start building apps for Microsoft’s latest operating system. Virtual machines are pre-built for four virtualization services: VMWare, second-gen Hyper-V, VirtualBox, and Parallels (the official way to run Windows on ARM-powered Macs), and include the following:
- Windows 11 Enterprise Edition build 22621.1555 (moment 2 update)
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Visual Studio 2022 Community Edition enabled for C# workloads for UWP, .NET Desktop, Azure, and Windows App SDK
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The Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 is enabled with Ubuntu installed.
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Windows Terminal is installed.
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Developer mode is enabled.
Microsoft’s virtual machines are free during the evaluation period. On July 18, 2023, the operating system will prompt you to enter a valid enterprise license key to continue using it. The desktop background will darken, and the OS will shut down every hour.
You can download the latest Windows 11 development environment. From the official website. Make sure you have at least 23GB of free disk space, and your PC can allocate 8GB of RAM to run WDE.