It does run on real hardware, it's just very limited. Graphics card support is quite basic, it can't boot from a disk with a partition table (so the current ISO

It does run on real hardware, it's just very limited. Graphics card support is quite basic, it can't boot from a disk with a partition table (so the current ISO image uses a bootloader to load the filesystem into memory and emulates one), only the rtl8168d and e1000d Ethernet controllers are supported, and there's no USB HID or mass storage support so you need a PS/2 mouse & keyboard.