5 ms·

QEMU is absolutely incredible. I think its most undersold feature is the fact that it runs on Windows hosts[0] thanks to MinGW. This in itself isn't unique, but

QEMU is absolutely incredible. I think its most undersold feature is the fact that it runs on Windows hosts[0] thanks to MinGW. This in itself isn't unique, but what is unique is that by default it runs entirely without admin privileges. I've been playing with shipping server apps as QEMU VMs and it works surprisingly well. QEMU itself is small enough (~20MB) to ship the entire thing with the app, including DLLs. With -accel whpx you can even get pretty solid CPU acceleration. WHPX[1] is sort of like KVM for Windows, only takes a couple clicks and a reboot to enable, and ships on both Windows Home and Pro. Other than the heroes who did the actual work, we probably have Android to thank[2] for this situation. If you're willing to get your hands a little dirty, QEMU is a fairly viable alternative to WSL or even Docker on Windows. [0]: https://qemu.weilnetz.de/w64/ https://qemu.weilnetz.de/w64/ [1]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/android/get-started/installation/android-emulator/hardware-acceleration?pivots=windows https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/android/get-started... [2]: https://developer.android.com/studio/run/emulator-acceleration#vm-windows https://developer.android.com/studio/run/emulator-accelerati...

password4321 4y ago
https://github.com/intel/haxm https://github.com/intel/haxm looks cool, thanks! Windows Home support saves a few bucks.
- anderspitman 4y ago
  I wonder if there's actually any reason to use HAXM these days, since WHP ships with windows and works for both Intel and AMD CPUs?
  - orev 4y ago
    Enabling Hyper-V on Windows currently causes problems with VirtualBox, so that’s one reason. They’re (vbox) working on fixing it, but it hasn’t landed yet.
    - anderspitman 4y ago
      Enabling Windows Hypervisor Platform doesn't require enabling Hyper-V. Hyper-V doesn't even exist on Windows Home, but WHP does. That said, I have no idea whether WHP interferes with VirtualBox.
jstarks 4y ago
Yes, we were very excited to get WHP (Windows Hypervisor Platform) support integrated. Before that, you could only use it with the HAXM hypervisor on Windows, which conflicts with the Windows hypervisor (used by Hyper-V, WSL2, and the Windows Subsystem for Android).
- anderspitman 4y ago
  It's huge honestly. Do you think there's any chance of Microsoft enabling WHP by default? I think using microVMs for sandboxing apps could be amazing for securing user applications, but currently you still have to instruct users how to turn it on and reboot. Also, how active is the WHP work in QEMU? Is it mostly done by the QEMU folks or inside MS? Is anyone other than Android actively banging on it? Sorry for the deluge of questions but I think there's a ton of untapped potential in this tech.
zimbatm 4y ago
QEMU and FFmpeg are sort of in this category of tooling that are incredibly powerful. The amount of things you can do with it, the technical achievement, is incredible. And the only thing holding them back is that you need 3 pages of command-line arguments to invoke them properly :-) (EDIT: I was just reminded that both were started by the same author: Fabrice Ballad)
- forty 4y ago
  I'm not sure if you chose those two software randomly, so just in case you did: they both have the same creator, Fabrice Bellard
VMtest 4y ago
I didn't see anyone mentioning about GPU acceleration for 3D graphics so just in case for those who are not aware, Virtio-GPU, a virtual GPU implemented in Qemu for Linux and classic Windows OS guest machines, which works under Windows host. Just like VMWare. You can watch some demo videos from the YouTube channel "KJ Liew", 1. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl8InhZs1ixZBcLrMDSWd0A/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl8InhZs1ixZBcLrMDSWd0A/vid... I think KJ Liew is also the person that submitted patches to Qemu for M1 Mac to have 3D acceleration in Linux/Classic Window OS guests
- anderspitman 4y ago
  That channel looks awesome. Looks like they have a bunch of videos where they play classic PC games on old Windows versions running inside QEMU.

password4321 4y ago

https://github.com/intel/haxm https://github.com/intel/haxm looks cool, thanks! Windows Home support saves a few bucks.

anderspitman 4y ago
I wonder if there's actually any reason to use HAXM these days, since WHP ships with windows and works for both Intel and AMD CPUs?
- orev 4y ago
  Enabling Hyper-V on Windows currently causes problems with VirtualBox, so that’s one reason. They’re (vbox) working on fixing it, but it hasn’t landed yet.
  - anderspitman 4y ago
    Enabling Windows Hypervisor Platform doesn't require enabling Hyper-V. Hyper-V doesn't even exist on Windows Home, but WHP does. That said, I have no idea whether WHP interferes with VirtualBox.

jstarks 4y ago

Yes, we were very excited to get WHP (Windows Hypervisor Platform) support integrated. Before that, you could only use it with the HAXM hypervisor on Windows, which conflicts with the Windows hypervisor (used by Hyper-V, WSL2, and the Windows Subsystem for Android).

anderspitman 4y ago
It's huge honestly. Do you think there's any chance of Microsoft enabling WHP by default? I think using microVMs for sandboxing apps could be amazing for securing user applications, but currently you still have to instruct users how to turn it on and reboot. Also, how active is the WHP work in QEMU? Is it mostly done by the QEMU folks or inside MS? Is anyone other than Android actively banging on it? Sorry for the deluge of questions but I think there's a ton of untapped potential in this tech.

zimbatm 4y ago

QEMU and FFmpeg are sort of in this category of tooling that are incredibly powerful. The amount of things you can do with it, the technical achievement, is incredible. And the only thing holding them back is that you need 3 pages of command-line arguments to invoke them properly :-) (EDIT: I was just reminded that both were started by the same author: Fabrice Ballad)

forty 4y ago
I'm not sure if you chose those two software randomly, so just in case you did: they both have the same creator, Fabrice Bellard

VMtest 4y ago

I didn't see anyone mentioning about GPU acceleration for 3D graphics so just in case for those who are not aware, Virtio-GPU, a virtual GPU implemented in Qemu for Linux and classic Windows OS guest machines, which works under Windows host. Just like VMWare. You can watch some demo videos from the YouTube channel "KJ Liew", 1. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl8InhZs1ixZBcLrMDSWd0A/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl8InhZs1ixZBcLrMDSWd0A/vid... I think KJ Liew is also the person that submitted patches to Qemu for M1 Mac to have 3D acceleration in Linux/Classic Window OS guests

anderspitman 4y ago
That channel looks awesome. Looks like they have a bunch of videos where they play classic PC games on old Windows versions running inside QEMU.