# QEMU/KVM

15 Hacker News commenters recommended QEMU/KVM and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 8 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** People recommend it as a free, reliable way to run virtual machines on Linux, including Windows guests, using the QEMU/KVM command line or virt-manager. Critics note its large codebase and attack surface.

## Why people recommend it

- Free, reliable VM setup on Linux (4 comments): "I've been running either Qubes OS or KVM/QEMU based VMs as my desktop daily driver for 10 years." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46437343)) "KVM/QEMU is the only logical and sane choice on Linux" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46572596)) "QEMU on Linux with kvm is gold." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46582103))
- Runs Windows guests well (3 comments): "Between Wine, Proton, and QEMU/KVM there isn't any need for me to boot windows anymore" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46781772)) "virt-manager makes Qemu/kvm backing images for windows 10 or 11 easy." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46798379)) "it runs so well in QEMU/KVM" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48587255))
- Simple enough with command line (2 comments): "manually setting up one or a handful of KVM/qemu powered virtual machines is not actually that hard at all" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47399087)) "you'll do fine without the libvirt tower of babel, with just the qemu/kvm cli" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48862009))
- Good for isolated, secure setups (3 comments): "I think the most secure setup, though not so convenient for the average user, is a separate machine with QEMU/KVM." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48894314)) "The next best option is a type II hypervisor like Qemu/kvm on Linux" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46083130)) "you can use a full VM (KVM/QEMU)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46306196))

## What people warn about

- Large attack surface, memory-unsafe code (1 comments): "it has a huge surface area of features (all in memory unsafe languages) that have to be fixed" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49454543))

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "QEMU/KVM", https://hackerapproved.com/p/qemu-kvm/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).