You might want to read this to get an introduction to armel vs armhf.

If the below is too much, you can try Ubuntu-ARMv7-Qemu but note it contains non-free blobs.

First, cross-compile user programs with GCC-ARM toolchain. Then install qemu-arm-static so that you can run ARM executables directly on linux

If there's no qemu-arm-static in the package list, install qemu-user-static instead

This is a writeup about how to install Ubuntu 16.04.1 Xenial Xerus for the 32-bit hard-float ARMv7 (armhf) architecture on a Qemu VM via Ubuntu netboot.

The setup will create a Ubuntu VM with LPAE extensions (generic-lpae) enabled. However, this writeup should also work for non-LPAE (generic) kernels.

The performance of the resulting VM is quite good, and it allows VMs with >1G ram (compared to 256M on versatilepb and 1G on versatile-a9/versatile-a15). It also supports virtio disks whereas versatile-a9/versatile-a15 only support SD cards via the -sd argument.

This guide will get you started on porting snappy to your device. It covers setting the tools on your development machine and walks you through the basics of snappy porting by looking at the runtime requirement of a snappy system from a partition layout perspective. It will then go in depth explaining what is needed to make a snappy bootloader, kernel and initrd and will touch briefly on the requirements for installing/flashing images using ubuntu-device-flash.

First of all, you should make sure you have enabled the Snappy Tools PPA, as explained in the snappy introduction.