qemu

Generic machine emulator and virtualizer. Supports a large variety of CPU architectures.

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}}