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by threesevenths 853 days ago
Let’s clear some things up here if you don’t mind.

All HyperV hosts can only run Windows and certain Linux distros, this is not a limitation of the free offering.

Passthrough is also not available for most types of hardware in all versions of HyperV. An imperfect workaround is to use passthrough with Remote Desktop. I’m not telling you it’s good I’m telling you it exists.

HyperV server has a basic cli interface and it is indeed harder to manage than Windows Server with a desktop experience. When using the Server Core versions which do not have the desktop experience or the LTSC versions, the ui is the same. Some commands are not available.

Yes there has not been a release of the dedicated HyperV offering since 2016. It does not mean Microsoft will not release another one.

2 comments

> All HyperV hosts can only run Windows and certain Linux distros, this is not a limitation of the free offering.

I'm not sure where y'all are picking this up from, FreeBSD is even officially supported. I've run Redox and Haiku in it as well.

For non-production use cases though I recommend grabbing the latest Windows Server via a trial instead. The downside is you get 180 days per period and it can be renewed for 3 periods before it expires. The upside is you can just install Server Datacenter and get the kitchen sink, including full desktop. You do one VM migration and re-install and then the when that trial fully expires it's time to upgrade to the newer version of Windows Server anyways.

A hot tip is that Datacenter licensing allows you to activate VMs using a special CD key, so you can run a cluster of fully licensed Windows Server Standard VMs. Not sure if the Datacenter trial also works in the same way but I'd be kind of surprised if it didn't.
>It does not mean Microsoft will not release another one.

Sure seems to be the way they are thinking / acting / talking in public though.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-server-inside...

https://www.reddit.com/r/HyperV/comments/pejok9/microsoft_is...