You like virtualization, kid?

Yo dog, I heard you like virtual machines, so let me show you the steps as to how to improve your experience!

When it comes to virtualization, there are some hypervisors out there. For example, there is:

• Virtual Box
• VMware

And best of all:

• KVM/QEMU (QEMU for short)

Now you might be wondering; Why would one choose QEMU over the other hypervisors?

Answer's real simple; QEMU works at the kernel level with KVM (Kernel-based virtual machine!). Whereas other hypervisors work at the software level.

In short, fewer layers between software and hardware equals more speed.

"That's very kewl but how do i use it?"

These next steps are for Arch Linux only!

To start, you've gotta shove this command into your terminal:

  sudo pacman -S qemu vde2 dnsmasq bridge-utils openbsd-netcat virt-manager
  

After your download finishes, you should open /etc/libvirt/libvirtd.conf with your favorite text editor and check if:

• #unix_sock_group is set to "libvirt"
• #unix_sock_ro_perms is set to "0777 and
• #unix_sock_rw_perms is set to "0770"

You should then add your user to the libvirt group to be able to use QEMU. You can add yourself to the group by doing

    usermod -aG libvirt $USER
  

You should probably enable the service if you use VMs often, otherwise, you should restart the service by doing:

    sudo systemctl restart libvirtd
  

It'll automatically start the service, if it's already running, it will recognize the permission changes you've made. pretty cool, eh?

You're almost there! To start doing cool stuff, open up virt-manager, and you will be greeted with an unimpressive but fairly functional UI. Happy VMing!