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Free Official MSIE VM's for Linux and Mac
- ytjohn 13y agoI've actually been using the Windows 7 / IE9 version of this for a while. There is a nice simple install w/snapshot that I utilized on both my Ubuntu machine and my Mac. It takes a snapshot before powering the machine so once your 90 days is up, you can just roll the snapshot back. https://github.com/xdissent/ievms https://github.com/xdissent/ievms Edit: I mainly use IE to interact with work's IE-only CRM/ticket system.
- k3n 13y agoWow, what's the $860 for, hosting?
- jsingleton 13y agoDynamics CRM? If so don't install IE10 as they don't play nice.
- jameswyse 13y agoThis looks cool, though I couldn't get it to work - The install ran fine, but VirtualBox doesn't show any VMs :s
- JunkDNA 13y agoFor a long time I was critical of MS for forcing developers to use their VirtualPC VM's because it just wasn't realistic: people use VMWare and VirtualBox as well as Macs and Linux. It was always an example of MS's frequent "plays poorly with others" behavior. Kudos to them for making it right.
- sljd 13y agoWhat do you mean by "forcing"? I'm running Windows XP on VirtualBox without any problems.
- jsingleton 13y agoI believe the previous official images were for Virtual PC or Hyper-V only.
- JunkDNA 13y agoIf you wanted to legally run multiple versions of IE without having to have multiple Windows licenses for every combination (e.g. IE8/XP, IE8/Win7, IE10 Win7, IE10 Win8, etc...) you had to use the MS-provided virtual machines. However, these were only ever made available as VirtualPC images. So there was no way to run them, even on Windows, without all sorts of machinations (some of which may have violated the ToS).
- rednukleus 13y agoI was always impressed that Microsoft let you use Windows in a virtual machine on another platform at all (not all their competitors do). But then I realised that it made business sense for them.
- runjake 13y agoWhich competitors don't? The only competitor that comes to mind is Apple and they don't block this either -- though I believe they were the last holdout. Nor does Google, in any capacity, with Android or ChromeOS. Edit: I am dead wrong. Apple only permits the virtualization of OS X on Apple hardware, per the EULA. It does not permit the virtualization of OS X on non-Apple hardware. http://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/OSX1082.pdf http://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/OSX1082.pdf
- jsingleton 13y agoI got the previous images the last time this site came up. Using Hyper-V that comes with Win 8 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/07/bringing-hyper-v-to-windows-8.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/07/bringing-hyper... to run them. Works a treat. VMWare workstation is also very good though.
- tracker1 13y agoI've been using VMWare Workstation for about a decade now... I've tried a few other VM platforms, and they've all not been quite as usable imho... I will say their support of ESXi updates, and pretty much dropping VMWare Server has been pretty bad.
- Tmmrn 13y agoLinuxVirtualBox.part1.sfx LinuxVirtualBox.part2.rar LinuxVirtualBox.part3.rar LinuxVirtualBox.part4.rar LinuxVirtualBox.part5.rar Why? Why the proprietary rar format? I mean, is there any reason to actually use rar over even "only" xz nowadays or for big downloads, zpaq (lrzip is probably not mainstream enough I guess)? And 1000 megabyte parts? Why?
- JunkDNA 13y agoThis was annoying. Thankfully you run the .sfx file and it stitches all the rars into a single vm. I too would love to know the reasoning.
- blahpro 13y agoAlthough they come from Microsoft, I don't feel enormously comfortable doing this: chmod +x LinuxVirtualBox.part1.sfx; ./LinuxVirtualBox.part1.sfx
- xradionut 13y agoI was assuming the built-in NSA access was making people uncomfortable. ;)
- tlrobinson 13y agoEspecially because they're not downloaded over HTTPS...
- crazygringo 13y agoThis is great -- it's about time they made these available for VirtualBox etc too, and on a proper, user-friendly page. (Previously they were just for VirtualPC, and required a bit of tricky configuration to get working in VirtualBox at least.)
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- wcfields 13y agoI had been using these to game my Dropbox account: 1. Configure the VM up the point of signing up / downloading the client. 2. Change the PC Name & spoof a new Mac Address in the VM. 3. Sign up under a referral code. 4. Rollback to the snapshot in step 1.
- Hilyin 13y agoThe only thing weird I found about this, is the win8 ie10 vmware for mac on microsoft.com comes with a boot virus, or so says Avast. It reports it has Kampana-37XX. Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/wXOu3uJ.png http://i.imgur.com/wXOu3uJ.png
- bti 13y agoDo these still have time limits on them?
- vizzah 13y agoDo they expire? Previousy IE VMs from Microsoft were only valid for ~90 days or something and required re-downloading (and then re-configuring all settings which was pita).
- trust-me 13y agoAnd often MS people would forget to upload updated VM.
- fuzzywalrus 13y agoThe great irony is I ended up hacking legal VMs. At least they're better about it now.
- jbyers 13y agoPer the blog post listed from modern.ie, the IE6 VMs expire after 90 days and the others become crippled after 90 days. Sounds like more of the same. http://blog.reybango.com/2013/02/04/making-internet-explorer-testing-easier-with-new-ie-vms/ http://blog.reybango.com/2013/02/04/making-internet-explorer...
- rschmitty 13y agoJust take a snapshot of your VM after you have configured it the way you like. I do this with VMWare. When 90 days goes by, roll back to that snap shot. take note of anything you upgraded since so you can create a new 90 day snapshot with more of the recent updates
- MicroAndMacro 13y agoHi vizzah. These are all Enterprise Evaluation versions of Windows for the most part and they all expire. We recommend you download once, take a snapshot BEFORE first use, then after 90 days revert to the snapshot. Not ideal I know as you still lose any changes you did to the image but saves you downloading again and configuring. Apologies for that bit of pain. Follow @IEDevChat for updates and stuff.
- dalanmiller 13y agoExcept these stop working after 90 days.
- nness 13y agoIts a virtual machine though, just make a snapshot once you have it booted and working as you'd like, and roll it back when you're done. If I remember, that was Microsoft's recommendation as well.
- kogir 13y agoIt's about time. The "Grab them all with cURL" instructions are also a nice touch.
- dave1010uk 13y agoOK, now I've got a pretty solid IE test setup, how do I go about testing Mac browsers (eg Safari) without a Mac? AFAIK the Mac OS X license says it can't be virtualized under non-Mac hardware. It looks like the only options are to use remote testing services, buy Apple hardware or illegally use Mac on a non-Mac host.
- guiambros 13y agohttp://browserstack.com http://browserstack.com ? I'm not affiliated with them or anything. Just started using last weekend and liked it a lot.
- dave1010uk 13y agoI use browserstack a fair bit already (and have used saucelabs in he past). These remote testing services are really great and cover 80% of my testing needs. However what they don't do is let you get a true feel for what it's like for an end user to interact with the site due to the latency. This becomes more apparent with interactive web apps.
- rschmitty 13y agoWithout a mac, you have no choice but something like BrowserStack However, when you cave... I test OSX with VMWare following this guide: http://www.souldevteam.net/blog/2013/03/22/os-x-mountain-lion-10-8-3-vmware-image/ http://www.souldevteam.net/blog/2013/03/22/os-x-mountain-lio...
- yogo 13y agoYep, it would really be great if there was something similar to this for Safari on OSX.
- markdown 13y agohttps://saucelabs.com/ https://saucelabs.com/
- dave1010uk 13y agoGoing down the Apple hardware route it looks like a Mac Mini is the cheapest option. Unless the Mac OS X licence doesn't prohibit running it on Apple TV somehow.
- pixelcort 13y agoHow does this compare to what you get when you run the ievms script? https://github.com/xdissent/ievms https://github.com/xdissent/ievms
- adamcw 13y agoI'm pretty sure they are sourced from the same VM's. The only notable difference is that ievms converts (or did when I tried it last) from the VirtualPC copy - MS is now allowing these for download in other formats (Parallels/VMWare/Virtualbox) without needing to convert.
- inthewind 13y agoClassic example of UX nightmare: So I follow the link, I see a button that says get free VMS. I click it. I then can't figure out what I'm meant to do. I stare at some weird quickstart offer. I give up. I come back to HN, and think - how come others have managed to download their images. I go back, I realise that the button just activates a dropdown/rollup (and it's already in the dropdown state, so clicking the button rolls it up!), and then finally I get to the VM images. To be honest, It would be easier to just have an apache directory index, with folders and a load of accompanying checksums. I got there in the end. The other thing that I failed to notice, was that this was actually a Microsoft site! Why not hang off of their domain name? How am I supposed to know this is official?
- wcdolphin 13y agoWhile I see your opinion, I think it is largely confused. That button you pressed is greyed out, as it has already been pressed. Actually, part of the issue is that the original poster provided a deep link into the site, which maintained the user's state, viewing the download flow. The big blue button asking you to "Select desired testing OS" was not obvious?
- marshray 13y agoTook me a second to understand what the two blue dropdowns were for. To me the "desired [for] testing OS" would refer to the guest OS running IE. "Select host OS" would have made a lot more sense to me. Or just list the 9 options as links on the page and let me click them like any normal web content.
- inthewind 13y agoDoes it say that? It reads 'Select Desired Testing OS', which is an odd phrase. It could read 'Select desired testing (host) OS'. But may aswell just read 'Select host OS', as you suggest. Seems to be a classic case of Microsoft changing terminology, and just confusing everyone further down the line in the process. You could spell out what a host OS is on a descriptive help text next to the form control. Also noticed that there's no VMWare option under Linux - why would that be? Plus the blue font isn't really dark enough to read. Great to see some md5s though! Another niggle, which I totally missed the first time is that if you select the wrong option navigate away from the page. And then use the back button - you are back to square one. Which is a good reason why this type of download page just doesn't really work.
- ndr 13y agoDoes anyone use this Browserling? https://browserling.com/ https://browserling.com/
- tracker1 13y agoI find it funny that the Linux platform dropdown doesn't offer the VMWare VM...
- magnetikonline 13y agoThis is rather old news - but it seems it's new to some. I put together some setup notes for Linux with Virtual Box (Ubuntu in my case) in a Gist, as I found some of the Microsoft setup notes were lacking: https://gist.github.com/magnetikonline/5274656 https://gist.github.com/magnetikonline/5274656
- novaleaf 13y agoIf you have access to a windows box, here's a better solution: Install IE10 and use the dev tools (F12). there you can set browser emulation to IE 7,8,9,10. doesn't include ie6, but not many people still use it: http://www.ie6countdown.com/ http://www.ie6countdown.com/
- Pwnguinz 13y agoIE10's dev tools emulation is not perfect, and has its own set of quirks. Especially as it relates to the JS runtime[1]. [1] http://alexjmackey.wordpress.com/2012/10/19/how-accurate-ie-dev-tools/ http://alexjmackey.wordpress.com/2012/10/19/how-accurate-ie-...
- novaleaf 13y agothanks for the tips guys, i guess i have to give the ie7 one a download :/
- Isofarro 13y agoDon't do this for web development. The browser emulations are just that, emulations, and they fail to be perfect emulations. Which means you are likely to be fixing rendering issues and buggy behaviour in the emulated version that don't exist on the real thing, and more importantly missing issues that are evident in the real browser but not on the emulation. It's a cognitive dissonance, you are testing a browser stack your customers won't be using. Virtual machines are practically a better solution, though it gets into slighty murky territory when there's a lot of JavaScript magic going on. At that point, nothing really beats a native browser running on native hardware.
- scrapcode 13y agoIs it me or does this design make your head spin in circles, too? Not really a relevant discussion of the topic at hand, but damn... This is one of the worst designs I've experienced in a while, in a brain-is-so-confused-my-eyes-are-crossing, kind of way.
- joshstrange 13y agoHave any of you actually used these? To start off they are a pain to download/setup, come on Microsoft, you make the freaking OS and you can't package it any better? Second, these VM's are constantly complaining about not being activated. I understand that MS can't just rip that part of the OS out however it's a massive slap in the face to have them act like they give a shit about web developers and then have them provide sub-par VM's. I can pirate the OS and make my own (better) VM's which is really sad if you ask me. Also I have had the VM's shut down on me multiple times to go "update". TL;DR: These VM's suck and you are better off pirating the OS and making your own VM's.
- PostOnce 13y agoThis free Honda Civic sucks, you'd be way better off stealing a Ferrari. That's some pretty odd logic. What about buying the OS? Since you're, you know, using it for work? Is that not an option? The ROI would be pretty high, I'm guessing. If I only had the on-screen keyboard, my solution would be to buy a keyboard, not shoplift one.
- phaemon 13y ago> his free Honda Civic sucks, you'd be way better off stealing a Ferrari. That's some pretty odd logic. It is indeed, mainly because your analogy is so awful. You might as well have said: "This free cake sucks, you'd be way better off beating someone to death with an elephant." It would be equally stupid but at least it has cake in it.
- PostOnce 13y agoI don't understand where stealing the better service comes into the flow of thought. Free service is bad. Solution, buy better service? Why is the solution steal better service? It's immediately convenient and cheaper, but the long term seems disadvantageous to multiple parties.
- phaemon 13y ago
- charlieok 13y agoI like this because I'm interested in creating more cross-platform projects. By that I mean, not only does this webapp work on recent versions of Internet Explorer, but a developer can easily get up and running on it using windows (as well as Linux or OS X). I don't want a situation of “you should really be using this OS to develop on this project, and not those other ones”. I don't want to go out and pay for windows just to do this. It's not my primary OS, and it isn't going to be. But I do want to be able to say, “you can easily develop and run my app on Windows”. Having something like this from Microsoft might be just the push I need to make that happen.