Quickemu: quickget Writes the Config, quickemu Runs It

Two commands with a generated file sitting between them

The quick start is two commands with a file in the middle. The first fetches an image and writes a configuration:

quickget nixos unstable minimal

The second starts the machine from what the first wrote:

quickemu --vm nixos-unstable-minimal.conf

The design point is that these are not one tool with two modes. quickget downloads the upstream operating system and creates the configuration, while quickemu reads that configuration file and launches. That split is where the promise of automatically doing the right thing actually lands, and it has a consequence for anyone who cares about the details: the guest settings start in the .conf that the first command wrote for you, and quickemu then enumerates your hardware at launch to pick the rest.

Host support stops at Linux and macOS while the guest list keeps going

Host support is stated as Linux and macOS, and that is the ceiling. The project is Shell, with quickemu, quickget and quickreport as the top level executables. The guest list is far wider than the host list: macOS from Mojave through Sequoia, Windows 10 and 11 including TPM 2.0, Windows Server 2016, 2019 and 2022, most of the BSDs, and novelty systems such as FreeDOS, Haiku, KolibriOS, OpenIndiana and ReactOS. Hold on to that asymmetry. Someone on a Windows host can still run any of these guests by driving QEMU directly, but Quickemu gives them nothing.

aarch64 guests are emulated on an x86_64 host, with no figure attached

ARM64 guest support is genuine, and the cost sits inside the same sentence: aarch64 virtual machines run natively on ARM hosts and emulated on x86_64 hosts. The README attaches no speed or performance figure to either case. So on an Intel Mac or an Intel Linux machine, an ARM64 guest is being translated in software rather than executed, and guest performance will not match the native case. Boot firmware is a second place the same restraint applies, because both EFI, with or without SecureBoot, and Legacy BIOS boot are supported. That gives you a choice the guest image often makes for you, and TPM 2.0 alongside it means the secure path exists rather than being implied.

Four sharing mechanisms and they do not cover the same guests

File sharing reaches a guest by four different routes, and no two of them have the same coverage. Full SPICE support carries host and guest clipboard sharing. VirtIO-webdavd file sharing is offered for Linux and Windows guests. VirtIO-9p file sharing is offered for Linux and macOS guests. Samba file sharing covers Linux, macOS and Windows guests, but only if smbd is installed on the host. That last condition is the one to read twice, because it is the only one of the four carrying an external prerequisite. With smbd absent, the Samba route is simply not there and you fall back to webdavd for Windows guests or 9p for macOS guests, and neither alone covers both. USB device pass-through, smartcard pass-through, automatic SSH port forwarding, network port forwarding, VirGL acceleration, full duplex audio and braille support sit alongside all of this, so picking a sharing mechanism is a decision about the guest first and your host second.

Nearly 1000 editions is an enumeration, not a compatibility promise

Quickemu claims support for nearly 1000 operating system editions, and the way you see them is a bare command:

quickget

Run it with no arguments and it prints the list of everything it knows how to fetch, Ubuntu and every official Ubuntu flavour among them. Treat that as a catalogue of quickget recipes, which is a different claim from a guarantee that something boots. A recipe knows where to fetch an image and what to write into a configuration file; it does not by itself establish that the edition starts on your host CPU, that the guest agent is present, or that the features you need are wired up. The README states no validation procedure for the list, so nothing here tells you which of those entries have been run on recent hardware. Use the enumeration to choose a guest, then confirm that specific edition against your own machine before you plan work inside it.

Three tags, and seven months of commits after the newest one

Three releases are visible and the spacing between them is uneven. 4.9.7 was tagged on 30 December 2024, 4.9.8 on 24 January 2026, and 4.9.9 on 10 February 2026. The last push to the default branch master came on 29 October 2026, more than eight months after that newest tag. That gap is the practical fact about versioning here. Install 4.9.9 and you run code from February; track master and you run code no release has ever described. Neither choice is wrong, but they are different commitments, and the README offers no changelog and no migration note to move you between them. Pin the tag when somebody else has to reproduce your machine, and treat master as its own thing.

No install command in the README, and seven wiki pages behind it

The README carries no install command at all. It links to a wiki page titled Installation and to pages covering Linux, macOS and Windows guests, advanced quickemu configuration, advanced quickget features, alternative frontends and references, which puts the operational detail one hop away from the repository. The tree hints at how many ways in there are without settling any of them: a debian directory for distribution packaging, flake.nix with flake.lock and package.nix for Nix, devshell.nix and .envrc for a direnv shell, .gitmodules for submodules, a build-docs script, and separate chunkcheck and quickreport executables. AGENTS.md, SECURITY.md, CONTRIBUTING.md and a code of conduct sit beside the licence. Choose your path from the wiki rather than from the file names, because a Debian directory tells you packaging exists, not which Quickemu it packages.

Editorial conclusion

Quickemu suits someone who wants a disposable Windows, macOS or Linux guest for testing and refuses to hand write a QEMU config. It does not suit a Windows host, and it will not tell you whether a given guest edition boots on your hardware. Before committing, check your platform against the Linux and macOS support line, read the generated .conf instead of trusting the tuning, and pin a tagged release rather than tracking master.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. License: MIT
3. quickemu-project/quickemu on GitHub
4. README
5. Releases