Quickemu: Quickly run optimised Windows, macOS and Linux virtual machines

[_joel]

Shout out to https://virt-manager.org/ - works much better for me, supports running qemu on remote systems via ssh. I used to use this all the time for managing bunches of disparate vm hosts and local vms.

[freedomben]

virt-manager is one of the most underrated softwares there is. It's a powerhouse and I use it all the time. It is going to expect you to know some basic terminology about VMs, but it reminds me a lot of the old skool GUIs that were packed with features and power.

If your needs are simple or you're less technical with the VMs, Gnome Boxes uses the same backend and has a beautiful streamlined GUI. With the simplicity of course comes less flexibility, but cool thing is you can actually open Gnome Boxes VMs with virt-manager should you later need to tweak a setting that isn't exposed through Boxes.

[antongribok]

I know it's not the same thing, but Quickemu happily works over SSH too.

Run it on a remote system via ssh, and it will "X-Forward" the Qemu console on my local Wayland session in Fedora.

First time I ran it, thinking I was doing a headless mode, and it popped up a window, was quite surprising. :)

[thomastjeffery]

It's wild how important and useful a program that does nothing but configuration can be.

Imagine what life would be like if configuration was separated from the software it configures. You could choose your favorite configuration manager, and use that, rather than learn how each and every program with a UI reinvented the wheel.

The closest thing we have are text configuration files. Every program that uses them has to choose a specific language, and a specific place to save its configs.

An idea I've been playing with a lot lately is a configuration intermediary. Use whatever language/format you want for the user-facing config UI, and use that data as a single source of truth to generate the software-facing config files.

[stracer]

Libvirt and virt-manager are just simplified user interface to the real software, which is qemu(and KVM). They solve pretty trivial problems, like parsing config file and passing the right options to the qemu binary.

Yes, they have some additional useful administration features like start/stop based on a config file, serial console access, but these are really simple to implement in your own shell scripts. Storage handling in libvirt is horrible, verbose, complex, yet it can't even work with thin LVs or ZFS properly.

Unless you just want to run stuff the standard corporate way and do not care about learning fundamental software like qemu and shell, or require some obscure feature of libvirt, I recommend using qemu on KVM directly, using your own scripts. You'll learn more about qemu and less about underwhelming Python wrappers, and you'll have more control on your systems.

Also, IBM/Red Hat seems to have deprecated virt-manager in favour (of course) a new web interface (Copilot).

Quickemu seems to be of more interest, as it allows launching new VM right after a quick look at examples, without time wasting on learning a big complicated UI.

[mise_en_place]

I just like passing in options to QEMU on cmdline. This works well for some older OS like Windows NT on MIPS, or Ultrix.

[jthemenace]

Anyone running virt-manager on mac connecting to a headless linux hypervisor on the same network? I tried installing it through "brew", but was getting many random errors.

I thought about running it over the network using XQuartz, but I'm not sure how maintained / well supported that is anymore.

[xmichael909]

I just wish it had a web interface option, but I guess there is always proxmox.

[petepete]

Virt Manager is fantastic. I've used it for more than a decade and it's been rock solid throughout.

Being able to connect to my TrueNAS Scale server and run VMs across the network is the icing on the cake.

[fsflover]

At this point, you could probably use Qubes OS, which is basically an OS that runs everything in VMs with a great interface. My daily driver, can't recommend it enough.

[heavyset_go]

I wish Quickemu would make it easier to interface with libvirt, but apparently that's been marked as out of scope for the project.

[m463]

I've been using proxmox to manage my containers and vms.

Do people normally move from virt-manager to proxmox or the opposite?

[acatton]

Just a security reminder from the last time this got posted[1]

This tool downloads random files from the internet, and check their checksum against other random files from the internet. [2]

This is not the best security practice. (The right security practice would be to have the gpg keys of the distro developers committed in the repository, and checking all files against these keys)

This is not downplaying the effort which was put in this project to find the correct flags to pass to QEMU to boot all of these.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28797129

[2] https://github.com/quickemu-project/quickemu/blob/0c8e1a5205...

[colejohnson66]

Can someone explain how this is a security problem? While GPG key verification would be the best way to ensure authenticity, it's doing nothing different from what almost everyone does: download the ISO from the distro's own HTTPS site. It then goes beyond what most people do and validates that the hashes matche.

[jvanderbot]

How much of this is outdated practice? Shouldn't TCP/TLS be doing checksum and origin signing already?

In the days of FTP, checksum and gpg were vital. With http/TCP, you need more GPG due to TCP handling retries checksum etc, but still both due to MitM.

But with https, how does it still matter? It's doing both verifications and signature checks for you.

[prmoustache]

Also, author is typing his user password during live streaming with a mechanical keyboard while microphone is on.

[vdaea]

It doesn't download "random files from the internet", it seems to be using original sources only.

[password4321]

FWIW:

- Signatures are checked for macOS now

- No signatures are available for Windows

Maybe this year attention from Hacker News will encourage someone to step up and implement signature checking for Linux!

[jampekka]

Still magnitudes better security practice than using any proprietary software or service.

[dncornholio]

My red flag was that there is no explanation of what an "optimised" image is.

[claviola]

UTM[0] does this quite well on macOS. They also have a small gallery[1] of pre-built images.

0. https://mac.getutm.app/

1. https://mac.getutm.app/gallery/

[ivanjermakov]

UTM even works on iPads! I was able to run Arch Linux in TTY mode quite well.

https://docs.getutm.app/installation/ios/

[steve_rambo]

libvirt ships with virt-install which also allows for quickly creating and auto-installing Windows and many Linux distributions. I haven't tried it with mac.

Here's a recent example with Alma Linux:

  $ virt-install --name alma9 --memory 1536 --vcpus 1 --disk path=$PWD/alma9.img,size=20 --cdrom alma9.iso --unattended

Then you go for a coffee, come back and have a fully installed and working Alma Linux VM. To get the list of supported operating systems (which varies with your version of libvirt), use:

  $ osinfo-query os

[rwmj]

Also

  $ virt-builder fedora-39

if you wanted a Fedora 39 disk image. (Can be later imported to libvirt using virt-install --import).

[presto8]

Does virt-install automatically download the ISOs? When I try it, I get the following message:

    $ virt-install --name alma9 --memory 1536 --vcpus 1 --disk path=$PWD/alma9.img,size=20 --cdrom alma9.iso --unattended
    ERROR    Validating install media 'alma9.iso' failed: Must specify storage creation parameters for non-existent path '/home/foo/alma9.iso'.

[mrAssHat]

It is not obvious what the result of this would be. What hostname will it have? How will the disk be partitioned? What packages will be installed? What timezone will be set? What keyboard layout will be set? And so on.

[JamesonNetworks]

To do this I had to install libosinfo-bin

[arghwhat]

The convenience of such a tool is great, but it's also ~5000 lines of bash across the two main scripts.

I'd want to vet such a thing before I run it, but I also really don't want to read 5000 lines of bash.

[jstrieb]

While I agree in general that shell script is not usually fun to read, this particular code is really not bad.

Not sure if this will sway you, but for what it's worth, I did read the bash script before running it, and it's actually very well-structured. Functionality is nicely broken into functions, variables are sensibly named, there are some helpful comments, there is no crazy control flow or indirection, and there is minimal use of esoteric commands. Overall this repo contains some of the most readable shell scripts I've seen.

Reflecting on what these scripts actually do, it makes sense that the code is fairly straightforward. At its core it really just wants to run one command: the one to start QEMU. All of the other code is checking out the local system for whether to set certain arguments to that one command, and maybe downloading some files if necessary.

[nu11ptr]

Why is it different from any other software just because it is a shell script? Do you read the kernel sources for your OS before running it? Your web browser? My point is not that we should blindly run things, but that we all have criteria for what software we choose to run that typically doesn't rely on being familiar with its source code.

[elheffe80]

Probably going to catch some flack for this comment but... if you are that concerned with it, and have some free time, you could always use chatgpt to talk about the code. A prompt could be: "You are a linux guru, and you have extensive experience with bash and all forms of unix/linux. I am going to be pasting a large amount of code in a little bit at a time. Every time I paste code and send it to you, you are going to add it to the previous code and ask me if I am done. When I am done we are going to talk about the code, and you are going to help me break it down and understand what is going on. If you understand you will ask me to start sending code, otherwise ask me any questions before you ask for the code." I have used this method before for some shorter code (sub 1000 lines, but still longer than the prompt allows) and it works pretty well. I will admit that ChatGPT has been lazy of late, and sometimes I have to specifically tell it not to be lazy and give me the full output I am asking for, but overall it does a pretty decent job of explaining code to me.

[keyringlight]

I'd say this is a general issue with software, most generally how and what you do to establish trust, what expectations/responsibilities there are of a developer and user. The "many eyes make all bugs shallow" phrase does seem to be a little bit of a thought terminating cliché for some users, if it's open to scrutiny then it must be fine, conjuring an image of roaming packs of code auditors to inspect everything (I'd expect them more on the malicious side rather than benevolent)

Over for windows, there's been a constant presence of tweak utilities for decades that attract people trying to get everything out of their system on the assumption that 'big corp' developers don't have the motivation to do so and leave easy options on the table behind quick config or registry tweaks that are universally useful. One that comes to mind which I see occasionally is TronScript which if I had to bet on it passes the 'sniff test' with its history and participation I'd say it's good, but presents itself as automation, abstracting away the details and hoping they make good decisions on your behalf. While you could dig into it and research/educate yourself on what is happening and why, for many it might as well be a binary.

I think only saving grace for this is that most of these tools have a limited audience, so they're not worth compromising. When one brand does become used often enough you may get situations like CCleaner from piriform that was backdoored in 2017.

[yoyoinbog]

Looks interesting but would someone be so kind to point out if there are any advantages for a guy like me who just runs win 11 in VirtualBox under Ubuntu from time to time?

[kxrm]

Hard to answer this question as it largely depends on what you are doing with your VM. This appears to be a wrapper for QEMU and tries to pick reasonable settings to make spinning up new VMs easier.

[ge0rg]

Especially regarding GPU acceleration... Running video-conferencing inside windows inside vbox is almost impossible, and even modestly complex GUI apps have a significant lag there.

[prmoustache]

I think it is more an alternative to gnome boxes where the tool take care of downloading latest image in addition to offering a default config specific to that distro/os and additionally supporting dirty OSes like windows and macOS.

[xdennis]

If it actually runs MacOS then it's a huge advantage to installing in VirtualBox or VMware where it's very difficult to get it running (you have to patch various things).

[tarruda]

For Linux I highly recommend Incus/LXD. Launching a VM is as simple as

``` incus launch images:ubuntu/22.04 --vm my-ubuntu-vm ```

After launching, access a shell with:

``` incus exec my-ubuntu-vm /bin/bash ```

Incus/LXD also works with system containers.

[renonce]

One thing I loved but rarely mentioned is systemd-nspawn. You do `docker create --name ubuntu ubuntu:22.04` and then `docker export ubuntu` to create a tar from an arbitrary docker image. Then you extract that to `/var/lib/machines/ubuntu`. Make sure to choose an image with systemd or install systemd in the container. Finally do `machinectl start ubuntu` and `machinectl shell ubuntu` to get inside.

systemd-nspawn is very simple and lightweight and emulates a real Linux machine very well. You can take an arbitrary root partition based on systemd and boot it using systemd-nspawn and it will just work.

[0cf8612b2e1e]

Are there any numbers on performance change vs naively running a VM? Usually running Linux guest inside Linux host and frequently disappointed at the guest performance. I have never done any research on tuning the VM experience, so I am curious how much I might be missing. 5% faster? 100%?

[nickstinemates]

How are you running them? Running KVM/Qemu with appropriate settings gives near metal performance.

[tambourine_man]

Does it run natively on Arm (Apple Silicon)? How about the latest versions of macOS? Is there graphic acceleration? How's network handled?

[nexus6]

Wonder what the difference is with Proxmox and if there’s any optimisation done here that I can manually recreate in my Proxmox environment.

[bityard]

This is straggeringly different from Proxmox. Proxmox is made for labs and datacenters that have a need to host lots of servers as VMs. Quickemu looks like it is mainly geared toward desktop use.

[mihalycsaba]

It's a QEMU wrapper. I don't know how is this useful. It might save you 2 minutes. Maybe more with windows 11 because of tpm.

[overbytecode]

Quickemu gives me the ability to instantly spin up a full blown VM without fiddling with QEMU configurations, just by telling it what OS I want.

This might be less useful for those who are quite familiar with QEMU, but it’s great for someone like me who isn’t. So this saves me a whole lot more than 2 minutes. And that’s generally what I want from a wrapper: improved UX.

[spongebobstoes]

Looks like this tries to use better default settings for qemu, which doesn't always have good defaults.

I think that is useful practically, as a learning tool, and as a repository of recommended settings.

[colejohnson66]

> Quickemu is a wrapper for the excellent QEMU that attempts to automatically "do the right thing", rather than expose exhaustive configuration options.

As others have said, it's to get past the awful QEMU configuration step. It makes spinning up a VM as easy as VirtualBox (and friends).

[sandbags]

I couldn’t answer this from the site. Will this let me run macOS Catalina on an M2 Mac Studio with usable graphics performance? Because that would give me back a bunch of 32-bit games I didn’t want to give up.

[sharikous]

No. It will be slow as hell

But something like El Capitan will be somehow acceptable and Lion will be actually usable

[itherseed]

Is there something similar to this but for Windows 10 or 11? I want a Windows GUI for QEMU to build some Linux machines. I tried QtEMU but didn't like it. Thanks in advance.

[nightowl_games]

Anyone know if I can I legitamately make and submit iPhone builds off a macosx VM?

[jmb99]

Technically, yes probably. You’ll be breaking Apple’s ToS though, so depends how big of a fish you are as to whether Apple cares.

[ngcc_hk]

Sadly “ macOS Monterey, Big Sur, Catalina, Mojave & High Sierra”

[Gabrys1]

Why is it sad?

[ErikBjare]

As someone who has recently struggled with setting up both macOS and Windows VMs with qemu, this was really useful and really easy to set up.

[makeworld]

quickemu has been great, really convenient for running a performant Windows VM on my Linux laptop.

[siquick]

Would this be how I get to run PC games on Steam on my Mac?

[cassianoleal]

No, that would be either Crossover [0] or Game Porting Toolkit [1] (easily run via Whisky [2]).

[0] https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover

[1] https://www.applegamingwiki.com/wiki/Game_Porting_Toolkit

[2] https://getwhisky.app/

[osigurdson]

Something like macOS Parallels would be nice on Linux.