[Mageia-dev] qemu new upstream release (1.0-rc1) and should we move from qemu-kvm to qemu?

Sat Nov 12 16:44:03 CET 2011

Let me paste from the Arch Linux wiki documentation:
+
+--
+Difference between qemu and qemu-kvm
+
+Depending on your needs, you can choose either to install upstream qemu 
+or qemu-kvm from the official repositories.
+
+Upstream QEMU is a pure emulator, with no hardware acceleration. qemu 
+versions < 0.15.0 do have initial KVM support when QEMU is started with 
+the -enable-kvm parameter, but this implementation is still buggy and 
+nowhere as complete as in qemu-kvm, as many functions still do not work. 
+Starting with qemu version 0.15.0, the qemu-kvm tree has been fully 
+integrated with the qemu tree, and there should not be any difference 
+between qemu -enable-kvm and qemu-kvm. See the [QEMU changelog] for more 
+details.
+
+Upstream QEMU is capable of emulating many different platforms (arm, 
+i386, m68k, mips, ppc, sparc, x86_64, etc). On the other hand, you have 
+qemu-kvm, which is qemu (i386 and x86_64 architecture support only) with 
+KVM (kernel-based virtual machine) additions, allowing you to run 
+virtual machines at close to native speed. qemu-kvm is the version you 
+want if you have a CPU that supports hardware virtualization and you 
+only need to run virtual machines for the i386 and x86_64 architectures 
+(Linux, Windows, BSD, etc).
+
+Not all processors support KVM. You will need an x86-based machine 
+running a recent ( >= 2.6.22 ) Linux kernel on an Intel processor with 
+VT-x (virtualization technology) extensions or an AMD processor with SVM 
+(Secure Virtual Machine) extensions (also called AMD-V). Xen has a 
+complete list of compatible processors. For Intel processors, see also 
+the Intel® Virtualization Technology List.
+
+https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/QEMU#Difference_between_qemu_and_qemu-kvm
+--
+
+
+And now from the qemu changelog
+~~
+KVM
+Common
+
+     Countless fixes ported over from qemu-kvm, core is now shared with 
+that tree, i.e. has the same quality
+     Pimped up threading model, now fully synchronized with qemu-kvm tree
+     Removed dependency on external kernel headers, all supported KVM 
+features are now built into the binary
+
+http://wiki.qemu.org/ChangeLog/0.15#KVM
+~~
+
+What do you think? Can we move?
+
+There is also one important patch missed in Mageia - 
+http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2011-11/msg00787.html it's 
+dependency for the GNS3 simulator. OpenSUSE already includes it 
+https://build.opensuse.org/package/files?package=qemu&project=openSUSE%3ATools
+
+If nobody is against I will do it and contact the maintainer (misc).
+