xref: /qemu/docs/about/index.rst (revision b355f08a)
1----------
2About QEMU
3----------
4
5QEMU is a generic and open source machine emulator and virtualizer.
6
7QEMU can be used in several different ways. The most common is for
8"system emulation", where it provides a virtual model of an
9entire machine (CPU, memory and emulated devices) to run a guest OS.
10In this mode the CPU may be fully emulated, or it may work with
11a hypervisor such as KVM, Xen, Hax or Hypervisor.Framework to
12allow the guest to run directly on the host CPU.
13
14The second supported way to use QEMU is "user mode emulation",
15where QEMU can launch processes compiled for one CPU on another CPU.
16In this mode the CPU is always emulated.
17
18QEMU also provides a number of standalone commandline utilities,
19such as the ``qemu-img`` disk image utility that allows you to create,
20convert and modify disk images.
21
22.. toctree::
23   :maxdepth: 2
24
25   build-platforms
26   deprecated
27   removed-features
28   license
29