Run the emulation with: qemu-system-arm -M vexpress-a9 -kernel output/images/zImage -drive file=output/images/rootfs.ext2,if=sd -append "console=ttyAMA0,115200 root=/dev/mmcblk0" -serial stdio -net nic,model=lan9118 -net user The login prompt will appear in the terminal that started Qemu. The graphical window is the framebuffer. Tested with QEMU 1.4.0