A possible side project -- the proxmox usb windows 11 enabler.

[rayk_sland]

I work for a non profit and I supply my users with older hardware. It's one of the ways we keep costs down to use the maximum of our funding for the individuals we support. The new requirements of Windows 11 are quite worrisome, because I will have to replace something like 200 computers when win 10 stops being supported. One of the things that I have been experimenting with is running windows 11 on proxmox. It's impressive that I can supply through proxmox all the 'hardware' that makes a computer compatible to microsoft's new demands. But having achieved most of what I want, the thought came to me that it might actually be unnecessary. The memory requirements of a linux kernel and kvm-qemu are actually quite modest. What's to stop someone from creating a small boot partition or a usb stick that could virtualize the entire windows desktop, adding the virtual TPM and EFI components the way proxmox ve does so well and then I wouldn't have to replace all those computers. Windows 11 would be happy. And the performance might suffer incrementally but not that much. I'm sure I'm not the only one in this predicament. It's a thought. I'm dropping it where there is the expertise to pull this off. I don't have the resources, yet, if ever.

 

[_gabriel]

iirc, passthrough graphic card of integrated motherboard will not work.

imoh, bypass win11 requirements will be better solution. moreover Microsoft can extend Windows 10 free updates too same as Windows 7.

 

[leesteken]

You could start with any Linux LiveCD (Ubuntu, systemrescue, GParted or anything really) and you don't even need Proxmox for such a narrow use case. The underlying QEMU/KVM technology comes with any GNU/Linux distribution (qm showcmd will show you how).
The difficult part would be use the physical GPU for various hardware, but you could configure SPICE and just automatically start virt-viewer to display it on the desktop environment of the Linux LiveCD. The new virtio-gl might even give you decent performance on any (Linux supported) GPU.
There are tools for making your own LiveCD and you could make one that boots automatically to a desktop environment that shows a virtual Windows using free open source software.