qemu

Generic machine emulator and virtualizer. Supports a large variety of CPU architectures. More information: https://www.qemu.org.

• Boot from image emulating i386 architecture:

qemu-system-i386 -hda image_name.img

• Boot from image emulating x64 architecture:

qemu-system-x86_64 -hda image_name.img

• Boot QEMU instance with a live ISO image:

qemu-system-i386 -hda image_name.img -cdrom os_image.iso -boot d

• Specify amount of RAM for instance:

qemu-system-i386 -m 256 -hda image_name.img -cdrom os-image.iso -boot d

• Boot from physical device (e.g. from USB to test bootable medium):

qemu-system-i386 -hda /dev/storage_device