• QEMUAdvantages

Advantages of QEMU

This page summarizes some advantages of QEMU compared to other (commercial) similar tools. Most of this is taken from a discussion on QEMU developer mailing list. QEMU ...

• has two operation modes

  • Full System Emulation can run kernel and other OS by itself

  • User Mode Emulation (putty example in docs)

• is OSS so is not affected by a company going bankrupt

• is freely distributable

  • you can put it on a live CD

  • you can put it in a distro

• can be used without the need to install anything

• does not need admin/root privileges

• has USB tablet emulation so there is no need to install e.g. vmware tools in client

• can record audio (and with patch even MPEGs)

• runs on several different host architectures

• simulates several different processor architectures as guest

• simulates various different HW peripherals

• can be used for (Linux-) SW development

  • you can use it for kernel development, connect with GDB to kernel and don't need to reboot real machine

  • you can use it for embedded and cross development, using either user mode emulation (see e.g. http://www.scratchbox.org/scratchbox) or full system emulation (see e.g. ARM Linux on QEMU)

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