---
title: Machine definition
description: Virtual machine hardware
published: true
date: 2025-06-01T17:41:22.711Z
tags:
editor: markdown
dateCreated: 2025-06-01T17:37:29.262Z
---
# Virtual machine hardware
Libvirt uses XML files to define virtual machine hardware.
In the context of libvirt, a virtual machine or guest system is called a domain. In turn, a domain type refers to the hypervisor used for running the virtual machine.
## Domain type
At the moment, Phyllome OS focuses solely on hardware-assisted virtualization with [KVM and QEMU](https://www.libvirt.org/drvqemu.html). Therefore, the domain type KVM is the one used by default.
```
[...]
```
Not all QEMU commands are supported by Libvirt. To [pass QEMU commands](https://www.libvirt.org/drvqemu.html#pass-through-of-arbitrary-qemu-commands
), one need to use the following instead and add the QEMU command line at the end :
```
[...]
```
> If QEMU command lines are not immediately provided, it will automatically revert to simply `` upon writing changes to the domain
{.is-info}
Under QEMU, the said domain definition translates to:
```
qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm [...]
```