KVM Installation in Pop!_OS – Step-by-step

Installing

2. 2. Pre-Installation Checks

   First, Check KVM Virtualization is available
   With:

   egrep -c '(vmx|svm)' /proc/cpuinfo

   If in Output > 0 then your Processor support Hardware Virtualization!
   (But on a PC you may have still to enable it on BIOS…)Now again, Install the needed Tool:

   sudo apt install cpu-checker

   And then Verify it:

   kvm-ok

   If it’s Good you will see:

   INFO: /dev/kvm exists
   KVM acceleration can be used
   

   Finally, if the answer is negative you can still use KVM but only in a Slow mode…

3. 3. Installing KVM

   Now you are Ready to Install KVM on Pop!_OS System
   Now KVM should already be there, to Check for it try to load the Kernel Module:

   modprobe kvm

   Again on Intel Processors:

   modprobe kvm_intel

   But for AMD instead:

   modprobe kvm_amd

   Last, to Add the default Virtualization Frontend managing Stack run:

   sudo apt install qemu qemu-system qemu-kvm libvirt-bin ubuntu-vm-builder bridge-utils

   Following Pop!_OS Documentation about KVM related Packages:

   • libvirt-bin provides libvirtd which you need to administer qemu and kvm instances using libvirt
   • qemu & qemu-kvm (kvm in Karmic and earlier) are the backend
   • ubuntu-vm-builder powerful command line tool for building virtual machines
   • bridge-utils provides a bridge from your network to the virtual machines