[zamadatix]

> 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.

[I_Am_Nous]

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.