Run the emulation with: qemu-system-sparc -M SS-10 -kernel output/images/zImage -drive file=output/images/rootfs.ext2 -append "root=/dev/sda console=ttyS0,115200" -serial stdio The login prompt will appear in the terminal that started Qemu. The graphical window is the framebuffer. Tested with QEMU 1.2.0