QtEmu User's Guide

Overview

QtEmu is a graphical user interface for QEMU ( Quick-EMUlator ) or KVM ( Kernel-based Virtual Machine ) tools. While QEMU can emulate many kinds of processors, the QTEMU GUI focuses on x86 processors used in most PCs and laptops. Using QTEMU you can create a Virtual Machine (VM) that can run other software or even another Operating System as if they are in a machine of their own.

QTEMU also supports KQEMU (also known as QEMU Accelerator). This is a kernel module which notably speeds up x86 emulation on x86 platforms by executing much of the software inside the Virtual Machine directly on the Host Machines CPU.

KVM is a program that operates the same as QEMU but takes advantage new additions to the Linux kernel that support native virtualization . This requires CPU support for hardware virtualization, which has been introduced in many of the more recent AMD and Intel processors. The QEMU program is now starting to incorportate this KVM functionality so the KVM program will not be needed if you are using QEMU version that supports KVM (version 10.0 and above).

The physical machine is often referred to as the HOST machine and the Virtual Machine or VM is referred to as the GUEST machine. There are tools that can be installed on the Virtual machines Operating System that improve interaction between the host and guest operating systems (eg copy and paste between guest and host).