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