How To Install qemu-system on Ubuntu

Posted on April 1, 2023 (Last modified on May 20, 2023 )

2 minutes • 393 words

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install qemu-system on Ubuntu.

What is `qemu-system`

qemu-system is:

QEMU is a fast processor emulator: currently the package supports ARM, CRIS, i386, M68k (ColdFire), MicroBlaze, MIPS, PowerPC, SH4, SPARC and x86-64 emulation. By using dynamic translation it achieves reasonable speed while being easy to port on new host CPUs.

This metapackage provides the full system emulation binaries for all supported targets, by depending on all per-architecture system emulation packages which QEMU supports.

There are three methods to install qemu-system on Ubuntu. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.

Install qemu-system Using apt-get

Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

After updating apt database, We can install qemu-system using apt-get by running the following command:

sudo apt-get -y install qemu-system

Install qemu-system Using apt

Update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, We can install qemu-system using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install qemu-system

Install qemu-system Using aptitude

If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Ubuntu. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

After updating apt database, We can install qemu-system using aptitude by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install qemu-system

How To Uninstall qemu-system on Ubuntu

To uninstall only the qemu-system package we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get remove qemu-system

Uninstall qemu-system And Its Dependencies

To uninstall qemu-system and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Ubuntu, we can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove qemu-system

Remove qemu-system Configurations and Data

To remove qemu-system configuration and data from Ubuntu we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y purge qemu-system

Remove qemu-system configuration, data, and all of its dependencies

We can use the following command to remove qemu-system configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge qemu-system

Dependencies

qemu-system have the following dependencies:

References

qemu-system website

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install qemu-system package on Ubuntu using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.