#linux #qemu #virtualization #homelab

QEMU

QEMU(Quick Emulator) is an open-source emulator and virtualizer that enables the virtualization of hardware, allowing you to run guest operating systems on your host system. When used with KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine), it provides near-native performance for virtualized systems.

Before installing QEMU, check if your CPU can use virtualization:

lscpu | grep Virtualization
# or 
egrep -c '(vmx)' /proc/cpuinfo
# or 
kvm-ok  # This worked with the RasPi on ARM -> install cpu-checker

Install

When installing QEMU, you should directly download the correct version for your host CPU architecture. (Don’t just install qemu.)

qemu-system supports VMs of various CPU architectures. If the guest architecture is different from the host, QEMU will use its built-in binary translator (Tiny Code Generator) instead of KVM.

On x86, use qemu-system-x86; for ARM, use qemu-system-arm.

Thus on the Pi5 running a debian based distro:
sudo apt install qemu-system-arm