3D accelerated qemu on MacOS

What is it for

If you own a Mac (x86 or ARM) and want to have a full Linux desktop for development or testing, you'll find that having a responsive desktop is a nice thing. The graphical acceleration is possible thanks to the work of Akihiko Odaki. I've only packaged it into an easily-installable brew repository while the changes are not yet merged into upstream.

Features:

• Support for both ARM and X86 acceleration with Hypervisor.framework (works without root or kernel extensions)
• Support for OpenGL acceleration in the guest (both X11 and Wayland)
• Works on large screens (5k+)
• Dynamically changing guest resolution on window resize
• Properly handle sound output when plugging/unplugging headphones

Installation

brew install knazarov/qemu-virgl/qemu-virgl

Or brew tap knazarov/qemu-virgl and then brew install qemu-virgl.

Usage

Qemu has many command line options and emulated devices, so the sections are specific to your CPU (Intel/M1).

For the best experience, maximize the qemu window when it starts. To release the mouse, press Ctrl-Alt-g.

Usage - M1 Macs

First, create a disk image you'll run your Linux installation from (tune image size as needed):

qemu-img create hdd.raw 64G

Download an ARM based Ubuntu image:

curl -O https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/focal/daily-live/current/focal-desktop-arm64.iso

Copy the firmware:

cp $(dirname $(which qemu-img))/../share/qemu/edk2-aarch64-code.fd .
cp $(dirname $(which qemu-img))/../share/qemu/edk2-arm-vars.fd .

Install the system from the CD image:

qemu-system-aarch64 \
         -machine virt,accel=hvf,highmem=off \
         -cpu cortex-a72 -smp 2 -m 4G \
         -device intel-hda -device hda-output \
         -device virtio-gpu-pci \
         -device virtio-keyboard-pci \
         -device virtio-net-pci,netdev=net \
         -device virtio-mouse-pci \
         -display cocoa,gl=es \
         -netdev user,id=net,ipv6=off \
         -drive "if=pflash,format=raw,file=./edk2-aarch64-code.fd,readonly=on" \
         -drive "if=pflash,format=raw,file=./edk2-arm-vars.fd,discard=on" \
         -drive "if=virtio,format=raw,file=./hdd.raw,discard=on" \
         -cdrom focal-desktop-arm64.iso \
         -boot d

Run the system without the CD image to boot into the primary partition:

qemu-system-aarch64 \
         -machine virt,accel=hvf,highmem=off \
         -cpu cortex-a72 -smp 2 -m 4G \
         -device intel-hda -device hda-output \
         -device virtio-gpu-pci \
         -device virtio-keyboard-pci \
         -device virtio-net-pci,netdev=net \
         -device virtio-mouse-pci \
         -display cocoa,gl=es \
         -netdev user,id=net,ipv6=off \
         -drive "if=pflash,format=raw,file=./edk2-aarch64-code.fd,readonly=on" \
         -drive "if=pflash,format=raw,file=./edk2-arm-vars.fd,discard=on" \
         -drive "if=virtio,format=raw,file=./hdd.raw,discard=on"

Usage - Intel Macs

First, create a disk image you'll run your Linux installation from (tune image size as needed):

qemu-img create hdd.raw 64G

Download an x86 based Ubuntu image:

curl -O https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/focal/daily-live/current/focal-desktop-amd64.iso

Install the system from the CD image:

qemu-system-x86_64 \
         -machine accel=hvf \
         -cpu Haswell-v4 -smp 2 -m 4G \
         -device intel-hda -device hda-output \
         -device virtio-vga \
         -device virtio-keyboard-pci \
         -device virtio-net-pci,netdev=net \
         -device virtio-mouse-pci \
         -display cocoa,gl=es \
         -netdev user,id=net,ipv6=off \
         -drive "if=virtio,format=raw,file=hdd.raw,discard=on" \
         -cdrom focal-desktop-amd64.iso \
         -boot d

Run the system without the CD image to boot into the primary partition:

qemu-system-x86_64 \
         -machine accel=hvf \
         -cpu Haswell-v4 -smp 2 -m 4G \
         -device intel-hda -device hda-output \
         -device virtio-vga \
         -device virtio-keyboard-pci \
         -device virtio-net-pci,netdev=net \
         -device virtio-mouse-pci \
         -display cocoa,gl=es \
         -netdev user,id=net,ipv6=off \
         -drive "if=virtio,format=raw,file=hdd.raw,discard=on"