QEMU 10.1.0

QEMU is truly excellent software, from the perspective of a person who very rarely needs to emulate another architecture. It "just works" and has wonderful integrations with basically everything I could want.. sometimes it feels like magic: even if the commandline UX is a bit weird in places.

I've always wondered though how it works with KVM: I know KVM is a virtualisation accelerator that enables passing through native code to the CPU somehow; but it feels like QEMU/KVM basically runs the internet now. Almost the entire modern cloud is built on QEMU and KVM as a hypervisor (right?) but I feel like I'm missing a lot about how it's working.

I also wonder if this steals huge amounts of resources away from emulation, or does it end up helping out. Because to say the modern internet is largely running on QEMU is likely a massive understatement.

qemu/kvm in enabling the cloud is huge but that's not the only place it really makes a tremendous difference. One example where it's essential is new OS development. They all basically first target the qemu machine with its virtual hardware. It makes development much faster compared to running on real hardawre while easily enabling debug output without needing cables and the like.

Eh, we just used stuff like bochs and vmware prior.

I didn't mean qemu is the only option.