I have heard about QEMU for years. Something about virtualization and Linux, this is what I've started to associate it to.

My Workstation runs on Windows, and up until some years ago I was using VMware Workstation for virtualization, and then moved over to VirtualBox, which I've also started to use on a Windows-based home server. I've always used both of them via the GUI.

Now, if I want to build a beefy Linux server (headless) and run some virtualization on it, would I then use QEMU and get the same thing I've been getting with VirtualBox on Windows?

How do both of these compare performance- and feature-wise? Are they alternatives, or do they server different purposes?