> Today, we’ll explore how you can start an unconventional VM by running a Linux kernel as a process within the Linux kernel itself. This approach doesn’t require installing virtualization software like QEMU, nor does it need root privileges, which opens up some intriguing possibilities.
My point is that VM software, especially older software and emulation software, doesn't require virtualization or root privileges. And yes, this is confusing because QEmu became virtualization software (just like VirtualBox did). Neither originally used hardware virtualization for anything. Dosbox still doesn't.
Hell I wish someone made something that could build dockerfiles and immediately start them as VMs in emulation using just the normal socket api to emulate network.
Yeah, but if you specifically target a Linux kernel to run as a regular user process, you don't have to take detours through CPU emulation code. It should (in theory) be more efficient to call the host's mmap() rather than mucking around an emulated MMU.
That was addressed in the first few sentences.