[10][11] In addition, Android 2.2, GNU/Hurd[12] (Debian K16), Minix 3.1.2a, Solaris 10 U3 and Darwin 8.0.1, together with other operating systems and some newer versions of these listed, are known to work with certain limitations.

[13] Additionally, KVM provides paravirtualization support for Linux, OpenBSD,[14] FreeBSD,[15] NetBSD,[16] Plan 9[17] and Windows guests using the VirtIO API.

Avi Kivity began the development of KVM in mid-2006 at Qumranet, a technology startup company[20] that was acquired by Red Hat in 2008.

It exposes the /dev/kvm interface, which a user mode host can then use to: Originally, a forked version of QEMU was provided to launch guests and deal with hardware emulation that is not handled by the kernel.

[25] KVM has had support for hot swappable vCPUs,[26] dynamic memory management,[27] and Live Migration since February 2007.