| ---------- |
| 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 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<Tools>`, 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 |
