KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a virtualization software for
Linux which is based on hardware virtualization extensions (Intel VT-X
and AMD-V) and a modified version of qemu to enable full hardware
emulation as far as needed to boot many PC operating systems in
unmodified form, including Linux, Windows and Mac OS X.

Note: KVM is not yet ready for production use and has known issues. You
can find details the Novell bugzilla: http://bugzilla.novell.com

KVM depends on Intel VT and AMD-V and does not run on CPUs without
these extensions. qemu can be used on those, with some performance
penalty, instead.

As the hardware emulation used for KVM is based on QEMU, virtual
machines can be moved between QEMU and KVM hosts seamlessly.

The package libvirt contains libvirtd, a simple hypervisor for managing
multiple QEMU and KVM virtual machines on one host machine. The
included virtsh allows to define virtual machines using XML files and
allows some simple management of such virtual machines on the command
line. virt-manager is a GUI for connecting to, and controlling virtual
machines based on libvirt.

Authors:
--------
Avi Kivity
Yaniv Kamay
Dor Laor