Using Microsoft Edge IE VMs with kvm/libvirt

Or how to use virt-convert on a practical example.

Ever wanted to check how Microsoft Internet Explorer renders stuff but no license at hand?

Welcome http://dev.modern.ie, where you can download time-bombed VMs. Pretty cool service from Microsoft.

Update 2020-11: a more recent URL is developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms/.

Now, these machines come as .ova files, suitable to be used with Oracles VirtualBox. Prefering kvm and virsh? Thought so. See how to get it done.

Aim

Use Microsoft Edge VM with kvm/virsh/virt-manager,

Requirements

Ubuntu 14.04 system
several kvm, virsh, virt-manager, libvirtd etc. packages installed and respective permissions set up.

Download VM

Head over to http://dev.modern.ie/tools/vms , and download your image.

Unzip and untar the thing

# Your filenames may vary.
unzip IE10\ -\ Win7.zip
tar xvf IE10\ -\ Win7.ova

Convert to qcow2

virt-convert IE10\ -\ Win7.ovf  --destination . --disk-format qcow2

This starts the viewer directly and you are ready to enjoy your IE experience (remember: you probably get paid to do so).

Note that you can even install an Excel viewer, although I am not sure whether thats fine with the EULA (like powering Windows XP with more than two cpu cores).

Having a better idea?

Awesome! Get in contact with me!