Even though Linux and macOS are popular, in the Oracle Applications world, you will end up with a requirement to have a Windows desktop. Most Oracle Applications users use Windows desktops to access Oracle Forms-based applications, which require Java-enabled web browsers. Though you can launch Oracle Forms on Mac or Linux using different ways, you may not be able to reproduce a peculiar error that the user is facing, which is more tied to the OS and Browser version they are using.
Thus, you will often end up looking for a specific version of Windows like Windows 7 with IE10 browser, etc. I have seen Oracle EBS customers looking for Windows 7 Virtual Machine (VM) to install Oracle Forms Builder for some customization development work as part of their EBS upgrade project. With Windows 7 long gone, it is always a challenge to procure a VM for this. So here is a resource that will help you in these situations.
As part of Microsoft Edge Browser Developer support, Microsoft has 90-day evaluation license Virtual Machine Images available for you to download for free. There is no need to worry about buying extra licenses for these VMs and these VM Images will meet most people’s needs. They have Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 Operating Systems with IE8, IE9, IE11, and MSEdge browsers preinstalled. They also provide them in different VM formats that you can import to VirtualBox, Vagrant, VMware, and Parallels.
If you use some elbow grease, then you can also import these to a cloud platform and use them there. The default user to login to these VMs is IEUser and Password is passw0rd! So why wait? Head over to https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms/ and download your copy of the VM.
Disclaimer: Every Enterprise’s agreement with Software vendors like Microsoft are different. So, doublecheck with your Vendor account manager before using these images.
Let me know if these VM Images worked for you in the comments section below. Also, I will post instructions to use these images in Oracle Cloud soon, so check back to this blog in about a week.