It depends what you want to do. When QEMU is used for virtualization it's typically a component in a larger stack like GNOME Boxes or virt-manager, two UIs that

It depends what you want to do. When QEMU is used for virtualization it's typically a component in a larger stack like GNOME Boxes or virt-manager, two UIs that rely on libvirt to run QEMU. When QEMU is used for emulating ARM boards or retro computing you can launch it from the command-line specifying just a few things like the path to a disk image file or the amount of RAM. There are a lot of command-line options and it can be overwhelming, but luckily they are usually not needed for these use cases. Documentation is here but it's easier to start with a QEMU command-line recommended by the software (e.g. exotic OSes) you want to try out: https://qemu-project.gitlab.io/qemu/ https://qemu-project.gitlab.io/qemu/