[HN Gopher] Quickemu: Quickly create and run optimised Windows, ...
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Quickemu: Quickly create and run optimised Windows, macOS and Linux
VMs
Author : teekert
Score : 89 points
Date : 2025-12-30 08:19 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| westurner wrote:
| IOMMU GPU passthrough with device selection would be a helpful
| feature: https://www.google.com/search?q=gpu+passthrough+qemu
|
| LXD manages qemu VMs and supports snapshotting, live migration,
| and a number of storage drivers:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45270468
|
| virtio-gpu-rutabaga works with Android VMs on qemu, but does it
| work with Win/Mac/Lin:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42921315
| subscribed wrote:
| I would love that so much. That's the feature I wanted to play
| for the longest while, but the shortage of time just doesn't
| let me.
|
| That would be a jixe step up.
| peter_d_sherman wrote:
| Brilliant!
|
| _This may just become my next most favorite project on GitHub!_
|
| For anyone who would create their own OS, or just experiment with
| other OS'es, this could be a godsend!
|
| The set of ideas which gives rise to this tool are brilliant, and
| while I haven't reviewed all of the code for potential security
| implications (as I would want to if I were deploying it to a
| production server in a business environment) -- it looks very
| well thought out at first glance!
|
| Extra kudos for having a flake.nix (for us Nix users!)
|
| (If you're using NixOS or the Nix package manager, you can
| download it here
| https://search.nixos.org/packages?channel=25.11&query=quicke... ,
| i.e., "$ nix-shell -p quickemu")
|
| And extra extra kudos for having Alpine, Nix, ReactOS, TinyCore
| and OpenBSD as downloadable OS choices!
|
| In the future, I'd love to see Windows XP, Windows 2000, and
| Windows NT too (assuming that Microsoft would permit that!) --
| but that would just be the icing on the cake!
|
| Short review: There's potentially something for everyone here!
| (Well, any OS person! Could Minix 3 be added in the future? :-) )
|
| Long review: Will definitely have to watch this project in the
| future, to see where it goes!
| ryandrake wrote:
| My first reaction was: Fuck! Terrible timing!! I just spent the
| last few days (during some time off from work) manually setting
| up macOS and Windows qemu VMs on my homelab running Proxmox,
| just to see if I could do it. And navigating all the janky, old
| tutorials, forums full of "try this" junk, hitting roadblock
| after roadblock (ProTip: macOS versions > Monterey will NOT run
| on Ivy Bridge processors in a virtualized environment) and
| trying to filter out and dodge AI garbage advice, was a real
| slog. Why didn't I see this article the first time it made the
| rounds on HN???
|
| My second reaction was in line with yours. This is awesome.
| Bookmarked already. +1 for the suggestion of doing more ancient
| Windows versions.
| dang wrote:
| Related. Others?
|
| _Quickemu: Quickly run optimised Windows, macOS and Linux
| virtual machines_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39188432
| - Jan 2024 (133 comments)
| mmastrac wrote:
| I've been trying to do something similar to set up Windows VMs
| with developer tools. This would be awesome if there was a way to
| inject a `ps1` script where we could go through the awkwardness
| of installing choco and various dev tools.
|
| For anyone interested, the magic incantation in the
| autoattend.xml is: <settings pass="specialize">
| <component name="Microsoft-Windows-Deployment"
| processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35"
| language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS">
| <RunSynchronous> <RunSynchronousCommand
| wcm:action="add"> <Order>1</Order>
| <Path>cmd /c powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File
| A:\scripts\setup-dev.ps1 > \\.\COM1</Path>
| <Description>Run dev setup script</Description>
| </RunSynchronousCommand> </RunSynchronous>
| </component> </settings>
|
| Redirecting to COM1 is a fun hack I discovered that allows you to
| remotely monitor these from build scripts.
|
| Even better would be figuring out how to slipstream the choco
| packages into the ISO - it's not super reliable to install these
| packages in my recent experience.
| password4321 wrote:
| https://boxstarter.org has been working on this for a long time
| and might have some useful ideas.
| fraserphysics wrote:
| I thought that macOS was proprietary, and that apple only allowed
| it to be run on apple hardware. Just last month, I used incus to
| test a software package in 6 Linux distributions. I want to also
| test the package in macOS. Must I get a license from apple to do
| that with Quickemu?
| mmastrac wrote:
| Officially? You can't get a license.
|
| Unofficially? https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM
| eek2121 wrote:
| hackintoshes have been a thing forever. Apple hopes to kill
| them off with the transition to arm...SPOILER: they won't.
| clircle wrote:
| Is this less buggy than UTM on apple silicon?
| tempodox wrote:
| I have to try this. All my previous attempts to get to grips with
| qemu left me with the impression that it's strictly for rocket
| scientists. This might ease the learning curve for me.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I'm a little confused as to why projects like this support macOS
| since at a minimum it's a TOS violation.
|
| Doing stuff like this, and integrating it into the main project
| puts the whole thing at risk.
|
| The only real reason to MacOS is it's tight integration with Mac
| hardware.
|
| Weird flex...
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