QEMU: A Powerful Open-Source Virtualization Tool

QEMU is a generic and open-source machine emulator and virtualizer. It can emulate a complete machine in software without needing hardware virtualization, achieving good performance through dynamic translation. QEMU integrates with Xen and KVM hypervisors, providing emulated hardware while letting the hypervisor manage the CPU for near-native performance. It allows running operating systems built for one architecture on a different one, and offers userspace API virtualization for running binaries compiled against different ABIs. QEMU boasts a stable command-line interface and monitor API, integrates with tools like libvirt, oVirt, OpenStack, and virt-manager, and is licensed under the GPLv2. Comprehensive documentation and a vibrant community ensure ease of use and support.