Quickly create and run optimised Windows, macOS and Linux desktop virtual machines.
Quickly create and run highly optimised desktop virtual machines for Linux, macOS and Windows; with just two commands. You decide what operating system you want to run and Quickemu will figure out the best way to do it for you. For example:
quickget ubuntu-mate hirsute
quickemu --vm ubuntu-mate-hirsute.conf
The original objective of the project was to enable quick testing of Linux distributions where the virtual machine configurations can be stored anywhere, such as external USB storage or your home directory, and no elevated permissions are required to run the virtual machines. Quickemu now also includes comprehensive support for macOS and Windows.
- macOS High Sierra, Mojave, Catalina and Big Sur
- Windows 8.1, 10 and 11 including TPM 2.0
- Ubuntu, and all the official flavours, supported by
quickget
- Full SPICE support including host/guest clipboard sharing
- VirtIO-webdavd file sharing for Linux and Windows guests
- VirtIO-9p file sharing for Linux and macOS guests
- VirGL acceleration
- USB device pass-through
- Smartcard pass-through
- Automatic SSH port forwarding to guests
- Network port forwarding
- Full duplex audio
- EFI and Legacy BIOS booting
Quickemu is a wrapper for the excellent QEMU that attempts to automatically "do the right thing", rather than expose exhaustive configuration options.
We have a Discord for this project:
See this (old) video where I explain some of my motivations for creating Quickemu.
- QEMU (6.0.0 or newer)
- Coreutils
- grep
- jq
- procps
- python3
- macrecovery
- mkisofs
- usbutils
- util-linux
- sed
- spicy
- swtpm
- Wget
- xdg-user-dirs
- xrandr
- zsync
Quickemu is available from a PPA for Ubuntu users. The Quickemu PPA also includes a back port of QEMU 6.0.0 for 20.04 (Focal) and 21.04 (Hirsute).
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:flexiondotorg/quickemu
sudo apt install quickemu
git clone https://github.com/wimpysworld/quickemu
cd quickemu
quickget
will automatically download an Ubuntu release and also create the
virtual machine configuration.
quickget ubuntu focal
quickemu --vm ubuntu-focal.conf
- Complete the installation as normal.
- Post-install:
- Install the SPICE agent (
spice-vdagent
) to enable copy/paste and USB redirectionsudo apt install spice-vdagent
- Install the SPICE WebDAV agent (
spice-webdavd
) to enable file sharing.sudo apt install spice-webdavd
- Install the SPICE agent (
quickget
can also download/refresh devel images via zsync
for Ubuntu
developers and testers.
quickget ubuntu devel
quickemu --vm ubuntu-devel.conf
You can run quickget ubuntu devel
to refresh your daily development image as
often as you like, it will even automatically switch to a new series.
All the official Ubuntu flavours are supported, just replace ubuntu
with your
preferred flavour.
kubuntu
lubuntu
ubuntu-budgie
ubuntu-kylin
ubuntu-mate
ubuntu-studio
xubuntu
- Download a .iso image of a Linux distribution
- Create a VM configuration file; for example
debian-bullseye.conf
guest_os="linux"
disk_img="debian-bullseye/disk.qcow2"
iso="debian-bullseye/firmware-11.0.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso"
- Use
quickemu
to start the virtual machine:
quickemu --vm debian-bullseye.conf
- Complete the installation as normal.
- Post-install:
- Install the SPICE agent (
spice-vdagent
) to enable copy/paste and USB redirection. - Install the SPICE WebDAV agent (
spice-webdavd
) to enable file sharing.
- Install the SPICE agent (
quickget
automatically downloads a macOS recovery image and creates a virtual
machine configuration.
quickget macos catalina
quickemu --vm macos-catalina.conf
macOS high-sierra
, mojave
, catalina
and big-sur
are supported.
- Use cursor keys and enter key to select the macOS Base System
- From macOS Utilities
- Click Disk Utility and Continue
- On macOS Catalina and Big Sur
- Select
Apple Inc. VirtIO Block Media
from the list and click Erase.
- Select
- On macOS Mojave and High Sierra
- Select
QEMU HARDDISK Media
(~68.72GB) from the list and click Erase.
- Select
- On macOS Catalina and Big Sur
- Enter a
Name:
for the disk and click Erase. - Click Done.
- Close Disk Utility
- Click Disk Utility and Continue
- From macOS Utilities
- Click Reinstall macOS and Continue
- Complete the installation as you normally would.
- On the first reboot use cursor keys and enter key to select macOS Installer
- On the subsequent reboots use cursor keys and enter key to select the disk you named
The default macOS configuration looks like this:
guest_os="macos"
img="macos-catalina/RecoveryImage.img"
disk_img="macos-catalina/disk.qcow2"
macos_release="catalina"
guest_os="macos"
instructs Quickemu to optimise for macOS.macos_release="catalina"
instructs Quickemu to optimise for a particular macOS release.- For example VirtIO Network and Memory Ballooning are available in Big Sur, but not previous releases.
- And VirtIO Block Media (disks) are supported/stable in Catalina and newer.
There are some considerations when running macOS via Quickemu.
quickemu
will automatically download the required OpenCore bootloader and OVMF firmware from OSX-KVM.- Supported macOS releases:
- High Sierra
- Mojave
- Catalina (Recommended)
- Big Sur
- Optimised by default
- Host CPU vendor is detected and guest CPU is optimised accordingly.
- VirtIO Block Media is used for the system disk where supported.
- VirtIO
usb-tablet
is used for the mouse. - VirtIO Network (
virtio-net
) is supported and enabled on macOS Big Sur but previous releases usevmxnet3
. - VirtIO Memory Ballooning is supported and enabled on macOS Big Sur but disabled for other support macOS releases.
- USB host pass-through is:
- UHCI (USB 2.0) on macOS Catalina and earlier.
- XHCI (USB 3.0) on macOS Big Sur.
- Display resolution can only be changed via macOS System Preferences.
- Full Duplex audio works on macOS High Sierra, Mojave and Catalina.
- macOS Big Sur has no audio at all.
- File sharing between guest and host is available via virtio-9p.
- SPICE has limited support on macOS:
- Copy/paste via SPICE agent is not available.
- File sharing via SPICE webdavd is not available.
- USB pass-through via SPICE is not available.
- Smartcard pass-through is not available.
quickget
can automatically download Windows 8.1, Windows 10
and Windows 11
along with the VirtIO drivers for Windows
and creates a virtual machine configuration.
quickget windows 11
quickemu --vm windows-11.conf
- Complete the installation as you normally would.
- Post-install:
- Run the VirtIO installer (
virtio-win-gt-x64
) from the CD Drive (E:). - Run the Guest Tools installer (
virtio-win-guest-tools
) from the CD Drive (E:). - Download and install spice-webdavd
- Enables file sharing between the host and guest.
- Download and install UsbDk
- Enables USB SPICE pass-through between the host and guest.
- Run the VirtIO installer (
By default quickget
will download the "English International" release, but
you can optionally specify one of the supported languages: For example:
quickget windows 11 "Chinese (Traditional)"
The default Windows 11 configuration looks like this:
guest_os="windows"
disk_img="windows-11/disk.qcow2"
iso="windows-11/Win11_EnglishInternational_x64.iso"
fixed_iso="windows-11/virtio-win.iso"
tpm="on"
guest_os="windows"
instructsquickemu
to optimise for Windows.fixed_iso=
specifies the ISO image that provides VirtIO drivers.tpm="on"
instructsquickemu
to create a software emulated TPM device usingswtpm
.
quickemu
supports FreeBSD production releases. FreeBSD support is maintained by <[email protected]>
.
quickget freebsd 13_0
quickemu --vm freebsd-13_0.conf
The following features are available while using the SPICE protocol:
- Copy/paste between the guest and host
- Host file sharing to the guest
- USB device redirection
To use SPICE add --display spice
to the Quickemu invocation, this requires that
the spicy
client is installed, available from the spice-client-gtk
package
in Debian/Ubuntu.
quickemu --vm ubuntu-focal.conf --display spice
Since Quickemu 2.1.0 efi
is the default boot option. If you want to override
this behaviour then add the following line to you VM configuration to enable
legacy BIOS.
boot="legacy"
- Enable Legacy BIOS boot
By default, Quickemu will calculate the number of CPUs cores and RAM to allocate to a VM based on the specifications of your host computer. You can override this default behaviour and tune the VM configuration to your liking.
Add additional lines to your virtual machine configuration:
cpu_cores="4"
- Specify the number of CPU cores allocated to the VMram="4G"
- Specify the amount of RAM to allocate to the VMdisk_size="16G"
- Specify the size of the virtual disk allocated to the VM
Preallocation mode (allowed values: off
(default), metadata
, falloc
, full
).
An image with preallocated metadata is initially larger but can improve performance
when the image needs to grow.
Specify what disk preallocation should be used, if any, when creating the system disk image by adding a line like this to your VM configuration.
preallocation="metadata"
If you want to expose an ISO image from the host to guest add the following line to the VM configuration:
fixed_iso="/path/to/image.iso"
If you're like Alan Pope you'll probably want to mount a floppy disk image in the guest. To do so add the following line to the VM configuration:
floppy="/path/to/floppy.img"
Add an additional line to your virtual machine configuration. For example:
port_forwards=("8123:8123" "8888:80")
In the example above:
- Port 8123 on the host is forwarded to port 8123 on the guest.
- Port 8888 on the host is forwarded to port 80 on the guest.
Quickemu supports USB redirection via SPICE pass-through and host pass-through.
Using SPICE for USB pass-through is easiest as it doesn't require any elevated
permission, start Quickemu with --display spice
and then select Input
->
Select USB Device for redirection
from the menu to choose which device(s) you want
to attach to the guest.
USB host redirection is not recommended, it is provided purely for backwards compatibility to older versions of Quickemu. Using SPICE is preferred, see above.
Add an additional line to your virtual machine configuration. For example:
usb_devices=("046d:082d" "046d:085e")
In the example above:
- The USB device with vendor_id 046d and product_id 082d will be exposed to the guest.
- The USB device with vendor_id 046d and product_id 085e will be exposed to the guest.
If the USB devices are not writable, quickemu
will display the appropriate
commands to modify the USB device(s) access permissions, like this:
- USB: Host pass-through requested:
- Sennheiser Communications EPOS GTW 270 on bus 001 device 005 needs permission changes:
sudo chown -v root:user /dev/bus/usb/001/005
ERROR! USB permission changes are required ๐
Since Quickemu 2.2.0 a software emulated TPM device can be added to guest
virtual machines. Just add tpm="on"
to your VM configuration. quickget
will
automatically add this line to Windows 11 virtual machines.
Here are the usage instructions:
Usage
quickemu --vm ubuntu.conf
You can also pass optional parameters
--delete : Delete the disk image.
--display : Select display backend. 'sdl' (default), 'gtk' or 'spice'
--shortcut : Create a desktop shortcut
--snapshot apply <tag> : Apply/restore a snapshot.
--snapshot create <tag> : Create a snapshot.
--snapshot delete <tag> : Delete a snapshot.
--snapshot info : Show disk/snapshot info.
--status-quo : Do not commit any changes to disk/snapshot.
--fullscreen : Starts VM in full screen mode (Ctl+Alt+f to exit)"
--screen <screen> : Use specified screen to determine the window size.
Desktop shortcuts can be created for a VM, the shortcuts are saved in ~/.local/share/applications
. Here is an example of how to create a shortcut.
quickemu --vm ubuntu-focal-desktop.conf --shortcut
qemu
will always default to the primary monitor to display the VM's window.
Without the --screen
option, quickemu
will look for the size of the smallest
monitor, and use a size that fits on said monitor.
The --screen
option forces quickemu
to use the size of the given monitor to
compute the size of the window. It won't use that monitor to display the VM's
window if it's not the primary monitor. This is useful if the primary monitor
if not the smallest one, and if the VM's window doesn't need to be moved around.
The --screen
option is also useful with the --fullscreen
option, again
because qemu
will always use the primary monitor. In order for the fullscreen
mode to work properly, the resolution of the VM's window must match the
resolution of the screen.
To know which screen to use, type:
xrandr --listmonitors | grep -v Monitors
The command will output something like this:
0: +*HDMI-0 2560/597x1440/336+1920+0 HDMI-0
1: +DVI-D-0 1920/527x1080/296+0+0 DVI-D-0
The first number is what needs to be passed to the --screen
option.
For example:
quickemu --vm vm.conf --screen 0
The above uses the 2560x1440 screen to compute the size of the window, which
Quickemu sizes to 2048x1152. Without the --screen
option, Quickemu would have
used the 1920x1080 monitor which results in a window size of 1664x936.
- Add
spice-app
support viavirt-viewer
; requiresvirt-viewer
8.0 or newer - Add support for
ignore_msrs
for macOS.echo "options kvm ignore_msrs=Y" >> /etc/modprobe.d/kvm.conf && update-initramfs -k all -u
- Add discrete GPU pass-through
- Improve disk management
Useful reference that assisted the development of Quickemu.
-
General
-
macOS
- https://www.nicksherlock.com/2020/06/installing-macos-big-sur-on-proxmox/
- https://passthroughpo.st/mac-os-adds-early-support-for-virtio-qemu/
- https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM
- https://github.com/thenickdude/KVM-Opencore
- https://github.com/acidanthera/OpenCorePkg/tree/master/Utilities/macrecovery
- https://www.kraxel.org/blog/2017/09/running-macos-as-guest-in-kvm/
- https://www.nicksherlock.com/2017/10/passthrough-of-advanced-cpu-features-for-macos-high-sierra-guests/
- http://philjordan.eu/osx-virt/
- https://github.com/Dids/clover-builder
- OpenCore Configurator
-
Windows
- https://www.heiko-sieger.info/running-windows-10-on-linux-using-kvm-with-vga-passthrough/
- https://leduccc.medium.com/improving-the-performance-of-a-windows-10-guest-on-qemu-a5b3f54d9cf5
- https://frontpagelinux.com/tutorials/how-to-use-linux-kvm-to-optimize-your-windows-10-virtual-machine/
- https://turlucode.com/qemu-command-line-args/
- https://github.com/pbatard/Fido
- https://www.catapultsystems.com/blogs/create-zero-touch-windows-10-iso/
-
TPM
-
9p & virtiofs