Quickemu: Quickly create and run optimised Win-10,11/macOS/Linux on Linux

https://github.com/wimpysworld/quickemu

by nixcraft • 5 years ago

405 118 5 years ago

github.com

implying• 5 years ago

Took a little while to find the magic words in there: https://github.com/wimpysworld/quickemu/blob/af26f41440d63a0...

hdjjhhvvhga3• 5 years ago

I always wondered how is it stealing if you (1) own a copy and, (2) Apple effectively stopped charging money for macOS.

jeroenhd2• 5 years ago

It's hardly stealing if the original owners still have a copy. It's more of a breach of terms of service, or unlicensed access to intellectual property.

The "theft" spin on copyright violation is the result of years of lobbying by the media industry because they foresaw a drop in sales when people didn't need to buy the same thing over and over again.

amarshall6• 5 years ago

No one but Apple owns a copy of macOS. They own a license to use it according to the terms of that license.

easton• 5 years ago

I think that the illegal (ish) part comes from Apple making macOS free if you're installing it on Apple hardware. They don't publicly license it for use on non-Apple hardware, although, I would guess that VMWare if not others has a license to run it on random x64 servers to test ESXi with because setting up a different testing environment of Mac Minis to test every change to their hypervisor on instead of using their normal testing infrastructure would be dumb.

(or they just do it anyway and don't tell Tim.)

gdavisson• 5 years ago

Ignoring the legal and accounting details, the basic idea is that macOS is something that Apple includes with each Mac computer that they sell.

If you don't own a Mac, you don't own macOS. If you own a Mac and some other computer(s), you own macOS for the Mac, but not for the computer(s). You might've purchased an upgrade to a newer version of macOS, but if you don't already own a Mac, you don't have something to upgrade, so the upgrade doesn't grant you ownership of macOS.

Now, from a legal point of view, it's a good deal different from (and more complicated than) that, but that's the basic idea. So don't make the mistake of thinking that because Apple gives macOS away for free to Mac owners, and don't use elaborate and onerous copy protection or license-tracking nonsense, that you're entitled to install it on something other than a Mac.

sydthrowaway2• 5 years ago

What is this?

lelanthran• 5 years ago

ourhardworkbythesewordsguardedpleasedontsteal(c)AppleComputerInc

sodality2• 5 years ago

It's a Rot13-encoded string: "ourhardworkbythesewordsguardedpleasedontsteal(c)AppleComputerInc". It seems to be the string that is supposed to make MacOS only run on certified systems, but it's obviously been reverse engineered and now it needs to be added to any Mac emulators to work.

OJFord2• 5 years ago

I assume the `tr` is to avoid detection, there's a tiny bit more info here: https://www.nicksherlock.com/2021/06/installing-macos-12-mon... (grep for 'OSK')

Seems people really avoid saying the value, ('don't be surprised it doesn't look like a random string') maybe there's some history of Apple requesting people cease & desist wherever they find it, I don't know.

m463• 5 years ago

apple's eula allows you to run macos on apple hardware.

Just install proxmox on a mac mini or old mac pro and run macos VMs

hdjjhhvvhga3• 5 years ago

I'm not sure how it works now, but a few years ago it was illegal to use more than one copy of Windows in this way (provided that you already have a purchased copy). If you wanted to have two instances, you had to purchase a second copy. I'm not sure what the relevant terms are for macOS now apart from the fact that in the old days VMware had an artificial block you need to remove in order to run Mac OS X. It would be interesting to know the current legal ramifications.

jeroenhd2• 5 years ago

AFAIK you can use Windows unlicensed as long as you activate it after evaluation. You're right that you can only run one instance of a given Windows product code on a machine for long-time use, though.

The last I heard about the macos situation is that virtualisation of macOS is allowed as long as you do it on Apple hardware that you have a license to run macOS on. You can run as many virtual machines on your mac as you want, as long as you've paid for the OS on your mac, which you can't buy separately anymore (making any restrictions on licenses a full ban on macOS VMs, which nobody wants). Perhaps you could buy additional licenses through second hand shops, depending on your jurisdiction.

As for legal ramifications, I don't think either Microsoft or Apple will care if you use this for your personal projects. Don't try this as a business, though, because that's where the lawyers start caring.

Legally, you'll probably be liable for a civil lawsuit from either Apple or Microsoft. I don't think it's actually considered a crime to run a copy of software without a license in most countries.

my123• 5 years ago

You can run as many virtual machines on your mac as you want

No, the EULA says:

(iii) to install, use and run up to two (2) additional copies or instances of the Apple Software within virtual operating system environments on each Mac Computer you own or control that is already running the Apple Software, for purposes of: (a) software development; (b) testing during software development; (c) using macOS Server; or (d) personal, non-commercial use.

GeekyBear3• 5 years ago

The old trick of buying an OEM copy of Windows (instead of paying full retail) when you were not an OEM building a computer to be sold to others was just as "illegal".

detaro2• 5 years ago

That wasn't "illegal" at all in jurisdictions that recognize the first-sale doctrine for licenses (e.g. the EU)

ngcc_hk• 5 years ago

For legal argument and for macOS I wonder whether I can run this in bootcamp Ubuntu then …

For windows alone I wonder as windows do allow no activation (other than …) and should it ok?

inickt2• 5 years ago

Legally, I think yes? You can definitely run macOS under ESXi when it is installed on a real Mac, so I can't imagine the difference between a type 1 and type 2 hypervisor making a difference.

andrewmackrodt3• 5 years ago

FWIW I use my Windows 10 Pro (VLK) license on my gaming PC, and as a virtual machine when using Linux. It's undergone 3 activations, initially for the desktop, once when I was using VirtualBox and the last when I converted my VDI to VMDK when I migrated to VMware. All activations were several months apart however.

Windows activation servers were happy enough with that, without any install becoming unactivated (other than the VirtualBox to VMware conversion which is the 3rd activation).

While you can use Windows unactivated but it restricts access to various settings, which may not be important to you depending on your use case.

rcarmo2• 5 years ago

This is pretty handy. I set up a KVM guest the other day and it was a very straightforward affair, but I can see how this can streamline testing.

I do wonder if it can use KVM directly instead of QEMU (I can always move the .qcow after, just curious as to how it would work with virsh)

maccolgan2• 5 years ago

What do you mean by using KVM directly? Using the KVM module directly, without an userspace component?

rcarmo2• 5 years ago

Using virsh and virt-manager instead of qemu.

pizza234• 5 years ago

Neat. Something not to forget is that USB devices (host) passthrough can be tricky, as it's a passthrough of the device, not the port. In difficult situations, https://github.com/darkguy2008/hotplugger comes handy (although it needs setup work).

ncrmro• 5 years ago

For my gaming windows vm in addition to passing through the gpu I have a dedicated usb card that solves things like Bluetooth controllers acting up

alufers• 5 years ago

What I would really like to exist, is a VM image for Windows 10, without all the telemetry, updates and anti-virus software. I hate that when I need to test something on IE, my laptop's fans start spinning up, and the VM is unusable, because Microsoft decided its a good time to scan the whole disk and consume all the vCPUs allocated to the vm.

jbaber• 5 years ago

I think that's what https://reactos.org/ is supposed to be, but I haven't personally installed it.

gattilorenz• 5 years ago

It's not. ReactOS is a long-running project aiming at creating an open source OS that is fully Windows compatible so you can run Windows programs on it.

While it doesn't have telemetry and you can run it as a VM (arguably the better choice, given it's state), it is not Windows 10 by any stretch, and I guess it doesn't run the latest IE version (but I haven't tried it in ages)

c0npr• 5 years ago

Read from other posts that a win10 ameliorated unofficial build exist.

Seems functional and depends on how much you trust the guys behind it. (or compile your own)

https://ameliorated.info/

Another option is to buy a ltsc win10 license (if you can find it cheap online)

gavinray• 5 years ago

Thanks for posting this -- hadn't heard of it!

I use the Windows Insider program to run legitimate Windows, and used a bunch of debloat/decrapify programs from Github to try to remove the worst offenders. But damn does Windows Defender and some of the other stuff really ream my resources, and there doesn't seem to be any easy way of permanently disabling them =(

I'd never heard of an "LTSC" Windows either. Interesting.

---

EDIT: Ahh it says there's no support for DirectX12, only Vulkan?

I don't know much about this stuff -- I thought it was a software SDK you could just install. But if not, that seems like a pretty huge con:

https://wiki.ameliorated.info/doku.php?id=faq#is_directx_12_...

andrewmackrodt3• 5 years ago

If anyone tries running Photoshop under Windows using this and has good performance please tag me in a comment. I've migrated several times from Qemu, VirtualBox and settled on VMware player (for non commercial usage).

I found that to be the "best" performing, although still leaves a lot to be desired and having to open the application, manually sign kernel drivers and then reboot after every kernel upgrade is a little tiresome.

inickt2• 5 years ago

Are you passing in a second GPU to the VM using VFIO? Otherwise I don't believe graphics will be accelerated.

andrewmackrodt3• 5 years ago

Sadly no, my Ryzen doesn't have an iGPU and I only have the one dedicated GPU. VMware's software? acceleration is partially useful however, there are some bugs requiring disabling transparency in Windows but various Direct X programs run mostly acceptably. I find it the best performing of the 3 setups when using GPU passthrough is not available.

acatton2• 5 years ago

While I appreciate the effort, and the code is very readable. I just want to give a friendly warning that these shell scripts just download random stuff from the internet and run this random stuff without checking any integrity/signature.

Apart from that, I will definitely use that project as a documentation for "how to run MacOS/Windows in KVM". Cool project :) .

password43212• 5 years ago

It does check SHA256 for Ubuntu images, but nothing else I could see.

https://github.com/wimpysworld/quickemu/blob/af26f41440d63a0...

GeekyBear3• 5 years ago

It seems to be grabbing the MacOS system recovery images straight off of Apple's servers.

vbezhenar• 5 years ago

Checking hashsums against downloaded hashsums file is pointless. If you're being MITMed (and downloading from `http` is asking for being MITMed), you'll download fake checksum. Proper check will require using GPG with pinned keys.

geniium• 5 years ago

It’s a good feedback, while not open an issue to give feedback on GitHub or better, create a PR?

acatton2• 5 years ago

Somebody else already opened an issue https://github.com/wimpysworld/quickemu/issues/70

theknarf• 5 years ago

What does this solve that isn't already solved by Vagrant?

bravetraveler• 5 years ago

Or even libvirt/the various virt-* utilities (eg: virt-install)

I'm not against tooling like this, but as someone already pretty familiar with KVM... I think I'd be quicker with virsh as I've been operating

yebyen2• 5 years ago

I didn't use this, but a similar/related project that is for MacOS as host OS, https://github.com/knazarov/homebrew-qemu-virgl

Vagrant is an orthogonal tool to this, it is a VM orchestrator not an actual VM. What does this do: well, qemu doesn't have virgl support merged yet, so you need to go to some lengths to compile it for yourself.

All of the other stuff (spice, virtio) is for "it should be a nice user experience and perform well" above and beyond simply being fast enough to use. In other words, you should be able to copy and paste between the host OS and the guest. You should be able to slide your mouse across the border of the VM window and do some clicking around then simply slide it back out and use your mouse with native host-OS windows again. It should have all of the features you expect and not force you to read a bunch of tutorials to find the features you expect from your desktop VM.

These things are all not granted when you use qemu out of the box. I have this intense 25-lines "qemu" script for invoking qemu-system properly. It was enlightening but I'm not sure how much I was enriched by the process of actually figuring all this out.

Quickemu is, I guess, for making figuring out all this stuff and making it easier to do (and on Linux.)

codetrotter2• 5 years ago

I have this intense 25-lines "qemu" script for invoking qemu-system properly. It was enlightening but I'm not sure how much I was enriched by the process of actually figuring all this out.

Do you have your script posted publicly somewhere?

edward• 5 years ago

I made a spelling correction: https://github.com/wimpysworld/quickemu/pull/66

londons_explore3• 5 years ago

It's sad that Qemu is so hard to use that scripts like this are necessary.

All this autodetection of the OS to apply tweaks and workarounds to make the OS run properly should ideally be eliminated entirely, and if that really isn't possible, it should be part of Qemu itself rather than requiring a special wrapper script to apply the right flags to make things work.

maccolgan2• 5 years ago

You are not really supposed to run QEMU directly if you are looking for that kind of experience, that's why libvirt exists. Other than that, QEMU should really be a generic emulator rather than being infested with platform-specific stuff, everything else should be independently maintained and pluggable. (Autodetection is also extremely fragile, and takes away from keeping a VM a VM)

londons_explore3• 5 years ago

But it would be easy to design qemu to have 1000+ config options which are on/off/auto settings, and the 'auto' mode is autodetected based on which OS is probably running.

Nothing stops someone overriding some or all of those flags to whatever values they like. It's still a power user tool, just one that also 'just works' for common usecases of people who don't want to manually set the IRQ number for the DMA controller by hand...

gizdan• 5 years ago

Is there a windows image that contains none of the hard dependencies like Edge and all stuff? I'm looking for a Windows 10/11 with every that's not necessary stripped out for a local VM for when I need Windows. Ideally things like telemetry, unnecessary apps, windows store etc all removed would be nice. I recall nLite used to be a thing for Windows XP.

simcop23872• 5 years ago

I don't know if there's one out there right now but I think it should be possible through the UUP process for creating windows install isos. At least if it is possible that'll be how it's done these days. That might give you enough info to find it if it does exist.

edit: from another comment thread here, https://ameliorated.info/ is apparently everything you're after. Not sure of any info about it myself but that looks to be decently useful.

jmnicolas• 5 years ago

Try Windows 10 LTSB if you can get a cheap license online.

trothamel• 5 years ago

I like this.

Does anyone know what how to type special keys, like ctrl-alt-delete, in qemu/quickemu?

matja• 5 years ago

If QEMU is compiled with graphical window support, and is started without `-nodefaults`, then you can press ctrl-alt-2 to switch to the monitor, type "sendkey ctrl-alt-delete", then press ctrl-alt-1 to switch back to the emulated display.

Common QEMU frontends may have a UI button or keyboard sequence to do this for you (they connect to the monitor backend and send the same command, either as text or as JSON (in "qmp" mode)).

hda1112• 5 years ago

Why? I’m happy with Vagrant (libvirt/VirtualBox), Multipass and LXD (also provides secreboot + UEFI VMs + USB redirection). No need for another tool.

0des• 5 years ago

Have you tried Dropbox?

moondev• 5 years ago

Can multipass launch an accelerated virgl desktop?

Vagrant depends on premade boxes normally built with packer.

This tool is much more convenient

hda1112• 5 years ago

There is no need to reinvent packer and vagrant. This “project” would be much better when it was a collection of packer templates.

I’m using several packer templates and prebuilt vagrant boxes and vagrant’s workflow is much better than this strange NIH tool.

smusamashah3• 5 years ago

I want to run many old windows [95 - XP] applications and games. If there is a way to have minimal os emulator (at least with all dependencies of that app/game) it would be great to have it as a container for that app.

I tried setting up qemu once by downloading many images. Almost none worked with apps I wanted to run. Also I had a very hard time finding a sane qemu documentation in one place. It's wiki is very messy to go through.

So is there anything to run win 98 to win xp apps in emulator/sandbox/container easily?

jdmoreira• 5 years ago

Best I've found so far is dosbox-x at https://dosbox-x.com/

smusamashah3• 5 years ago

Is there an easy to follow documentation for dosbox-x? And can it work with pre-built images?

I have tried to use it a few times but got overwhelmed by all the options. From the screenshot it looks exactly what I want (only for windows 98 though).

G4E• 5 years ago

I haven't tested it yet, but I recently came across boxedwine[0] which is basically wine + an emulation of the linux syscalls + graphical api forwarded to the host. All that wrapped in SDL.

[0] http://www.boxedwine.org/

smusamashah3• 5 years ago

From apps and games page it looks like it will run all apps I want. Thanks.

esjeon• 5 years ago

I've always kept a script like this on my computer, but the idea of "optimized" is very subjective, volatile, and prone to change. Also, that was a reason why I ditched libvirt, because once its internal change impacted the performance on my side. There's just no correct answer here.

Certainly, however, this can be handy if one needs to quickly spin up something.

willjp• 5 years ago

I haven’t tried this yet, but I’m very excited about this. Virtualizing MacOS is extremely painful, and windows is not fantastic. It would be wonderful to be able to quickly jump in, and build and test a program without a lot of preparation. Thank you!

alexeiz• 5 years ago

I'm not sure how "optimized" it is. I used it to create an Ubuntu VM and it was very laggy. Keyboard, mouse response and display update was slow.

husamia• 5 years ago

when "Add discrete GPU pass-through"

Quickemu: Quickly create and run optimised Win-10,11/macOS/Linux on Linux

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