---
title: QEMU User Session
description: For enabling 3D acceleration, port forwarding and other things a Root Session can't do
---

## Usecases:
- **networking**

A root session disallows a VM to forward ports and instead uses **NAT**, 
meaning that while your VM can see the world, the world can't see your VM and 
instead sees your PC. This is fine, except if you want to connect directly to 
your VM from outside of your PC (via ssh for example), you can't because there's 
nothing to connect to.

- **3D acceleration via translation**

A root session disallows VMM from using the render node `/dev/dri/renderD128` and 
cripples `qemu-cli`, as a regular user can barely make use of root qemu.

## Enabling User Session:
It's very simple, in the main **VMM** window, click on `File -> Add Connection...` 
and in the `Hypervisor:` dropdown menu, select `QEMU/KVM user session`. You can now 
proceed to make your VM's as explained in [QEMU and VMM Setup](/virtualization/qemu_and_vmm_setup) 
in User mode rather than Root mode.
