QEMU

A generic and open source machine emulator and virtualizer

Install

  environment = {
    systemPackages = [ pkgs.qemu ];
  };

Quick EMU

Quickly create and run highly optimised desktop virtual machines for Linux, macOS and Windows; with just two commands.

https://github.com/quickemu-project/quickemu

quickget windows 11
quickemu --vm windows-11.conf

Booting UEFI

To boot UEFI systems using QEMU, the UEFI firmware replacing the BIOS implementation needs to be provided while starting QEMU.

The following installs a script, that always starts QEMU with OVMF firmware implementing UEFI support.

  environment = {
    systemPackages = [ 
      (pkgs.writeShellScriptBin "qemu-system-x86_64-uefi" ''
        qemu-system-x86_64 \
          -bios ${pkgs.OVMF.fd}/FV/OVMF.fd \
          "$@"
      '')
    ];
  };

qcow-efi images generated from nixos-generators require more RAM than the default 128MB. Failing to provide enough RAM results in grub reporting "error: start_image() returned 0x800000000000009." or systemd-boot reporting "Failed to execute NixOS: Out of resources".