qemu/qemu
Official QEMU mirror. Please see https://www.qemu.org/contribute/ for how to submit changes to QEMU. Pull Requests are disabled. Please only use release tarballs from the QEMU website. observed · 2026-08-28
Health v2 · maintenance only
77/100
- Activity 99
- Release rhythm 35
- Longevity 100
Flags: no_releases no_license
How is this computed?
round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10) — computed 2026-09-03. Adoption (stars, forks) is never an input.
- gap_med: n/a
- age_days: 5135
- days_rel: n/a
- days_push: 7
- n_releases_24m: 0
Adoption not part of the score
13632 stars · 7111 forks observed · 2026-08-28
What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded
QEMU is a generic open-source machine emulator and virtualizer written in C. It can emulate complete machines in software via dynamic translation, run cross-architecture binaries via user-mode emulation, and act as a hypervisor backend for KVM and Xen with near-native performance.
Use cases
- run an ARM operating system on an x86_64 PC
- spin up KVM virtual machines with emulated hardware
- run Linux binaries compiled for PPC64 on an x86_64 host
- test embedded firmware for boards like the i.MX8MP EVK or AST2700
- provide virtual machines to OpenStack or virt-manager via libvirt
- cross-compile and test software for other architectures without real hardware
When to choose
- you need to emulate a full machine or foreign architecture in software
- you want a stable, mature virtualization backend for KVM/Xen
- you need to run or test OS images for boards you don't physically own
- you want user-mode cross-architecture binary execution on Linux/BSD
When to avoid
- you only need lightweight containerization of Linux workloads rather than full machine emulation
- you need a simple desktop VM manager rather than a low-level emulator (use virt-manager or GNOME Boxes on top of QEMU)
- you require maximum guest performance without hardware virtualization support, since pure TCG emulation is slower
Facets
application · maturity stable
simulation developer-tools cli security operating-systems developer-tools embedded-systems cross-platform windows cross-platform cli emulation virtualization kvm xen dynamic-translation system-emulator user-mode-emulation machine-emulator linux macos
9 sources
- readme: https://github.com/qemu/qemu · fetched 2026-08-28 · 6472a5048572
- homepage: http://www.qemu.org · fetched 2026-08-29 · df6c19f9bdb0
- site_page: https://www.qemu.org/documentation · fetched 2026-08-29 · bb10863de5ba
- site_page: https://wiki.qemu.org/ChangeLog/11.1 · fetched 2026-08-29 · 3f54bbec2270
- site_page: https://wiki.qemu.org/ChangeLog/11.0 · fetched 2026-08-29 · e5b2ee1e7cd6
- site_page: https://wiki.qemu.org/ChangeLog/10.2 · fetched 2026-08-29 · c81662fd9bfd
- site_page: https://wiki.qemu.org/ChangeLog/10.1 · fetched 2026-08-29 · 47f66cc61044
- site_page: https://wiki.qemu.org/ChangeLog/10.0 · fetched 2026-08-29 · 46b2ed8e7cb1
- site_page: https://download.qemu.org/ · fetched 2026-08-29 · 337ce7fd1123
Member repositories
| Repository | Role | Health v2 |
|---|---|---|
| qemu/qemu | main | 77 |
For agents
Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00 · Report a problem