Virtual machine

A Virtual Machine (or VM) is a form of virtualization of hardware within software-level processing through extended features of the Processor. A practical definition of a VM is that it allows you to emulate an entire computer within your own system, and run that system in an isolated container, under what is known as a hypervisor. For instance, on a GNU/Linux system, you can run QEMU or VirtualBox to run Windows within this container without having to switch systems.