I recently switched my Omarchy Linux setup to give QEMU/KVM VMs direct LAN access using a native bridge (br0) and systemd-networkd.
Here is the exact config I used to get it running without sudo.
I dropped three files into /etc/systemd/network/ to define the bridge and attach my interface (eno1).
- /etc/systemd/network/10-br0.netdev
[NetDev]
Name=br0
Kind=bridge
[Match]
Name=eno1
[Network]
Bridge=br0
- /etc/systemd/network/20-br0.network
[Match]
Name=eno1
[Network]
Bridge=br0
- /etc/systemd/network/20-br0.network
[Match]
Name=br0
[Network]
DHCP=yes
Then I just ran sudo systemctl restart systemd-networkd.service
To let my VMs use this bridge without root, I updated two config files.
allow br0
- /etc/libvirt/qemu-bridge-helper.conf
allow br0
After a sudo systemctl restart libvirtd, my VMs connect directly to the network via br0 instantly. Clean, native, and no sudo needed for launch.