# Quickemu

7 Hacker News commenters recommended Quickemu and 5 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend Quickemu as a quick way to create and run Linux, Windows and macOS virtual machines with ssh, VNC and SPICE access built in. Some warn that macOS and Windows guests do not always boot.

## Why people recommend it

- Quick, easy VM creation and running (3 comments): "Piping Serrvers + quickemu felt like a cheatcode to me atleast for more ephemeral vm's based workflow" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46619567)) "quickemu[0] is sort of amazing for these type of use cases actually" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48895601)) "it looks very well thought out at first glance" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46435965))
- Good for ephemeral VM workflows (2 comments): "Piping Serrvers + quickemu felt like a cheatcode to me atleast for more ephemeral vm's based workflow" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46619567)) "quickemu[0] is sort of amazing for these type of use cases actually" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48895601))
- Open source and useful (3 comments): "I am an absolute quickemu shill because I love that software" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46617696)) "Really useful tool, OSS for the win!!!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46461971)) "This is awesome. Bookmarked already." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46457449))

## What people warn about

- macOS and Windows guests fail to boot (3 comments): "The emulated machine crashed trying to boot macOS, and I gave up after a couple of hours." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46472547)) "Recently I tried to get Windows running using quickemu but that also failed." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47995767)) "quickemu [1] is good at running macOS VMs." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46921596))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [QEMU](https://hackerapproved.com/p/qemu.md): 114 recommend
- [UTM](https://hackerapproved.com/p/utm.md): 49 recommend
- [VirtualBox](https://hackerapproved.com/p/virtualbox.md): 34 recommend
- [Lima](https://hackerapproved.com/p/lima.md): 31 recommend
- [Vagrant](https://hackerapproved.com/p/vagrant.md): 25 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Quickemu", https://hackerapproved.com/p/quickemu/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).