---------- About QEMU ---------- QEMU is a generic and open source machine emulator and virtualizer. QEMU can be used in several different ways. The most common is for :ref:`System Emulation`, where it provides a virtual model of an entire machine (CPU, memory and emulated devices) to run a guest OS. In this mode the CPU may be fully emulated, or it may work with a hypervisor such as KVM, Xen, Hax or Hypervisor.Framework to allow the guest to run directly on the host CPU. The second supported way to use QEMU is :ref:`User Mode Emulation`, where QEMU can launch processes compiled for one CPU on another CPU. In this mode the CPU is always emulated. QEMU also provides a number of standalone :ref:`command line utilities`, such as the ``qemu-img`` disk image utility that allows you to create, convert and modify disk images. .. toctree:: :maxdepth: 2 build-platforms emulation deprecated removed-features license