Run the emulation with: qemu-system-arm -M nuri -kernel output/images/zImage -append "console=ttySAC1,115200" -smp 2 -serial null -serial stdio The login prompt will appear in the terminal that started Qemu. The graphical window is the framebuffer. Startup time is slow because of the SMP CPU emulation so be patient. Tested with QEMU 1.5.2