QEMU: A proper guide!

Denshi decides to make the QEMU guide that everyone else was scared of making. A Proper guide.

Commands in the video:
Installation:

Arch: sudo pacman -S qemu (optionally "qemu-arch-extra" for more architectures)
Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt install qemu
Fedora: sudo dnf install qemu

To create a virtual image use:

Launching the VM:

(-enable-kvm enables KVM, -cdrom selects an iso to load as a cd, -boot menu=on enables a boot menu, -drive file= selects a file for the drive, -m sets the amount of dedicated RAM)
(Remember! Ctrl + Alt + G to exit capture, Ctrl + Alt + F to fullscreen!)

That doesn't run so good, what can we do to improve it?

Basic performance options

-cpu host (sets the CPU to the hosts' CPU)
-smp 2 (sets the numbers of cores)

Basic Graphics Acceleration

the -vga option can be used to specify one of various vga card emulators:

"qxl" offers 2D acceleration but requires kernel modules "qxl" and "bochs_drm" to be enabled:

-vga qxl

"virtio" works much better and supports some 3D emulation:

-vga virtio -display sdl,gl=on

[jasx]

I wish I could like this times. I wasted half my day trying to figure out virtio in virt-manager and couldn't get it to work right. This works nicely. Thanks.

[Shadowat]

One of the most underrated channel. You deserve more. Subscribed 🤗. Just keep it up. We want more vids 👍

[HenriqueCE]

Nice! Thank u much!! And yes, USB passthrough is a must, along with clipboard share!
Thanks again for the video!

[masha]

What a great tutorial. The nice background music, no bs, and clear explanation is just so awesome!

[decmade]

I took 2 years to get here but so glad I did. Great tutorial boss!

[FishCow]

Another one who was banging his head up against the Virt-Manager brick wall of sadness and disappointment.
This was so much easier, and more importantly, works. Thanks

[tiaxanderson]

"A proper guide" and exactly what I needed, thanks

[dktol]

Nice clear tutorial. More QEMU, please. Basic USB pass-through would be good, and networking options too. I'm especially interested in network bridging to ethernet, so a VM can access my LAN and its DHCP server directly. I know this is basic stuff, but the QEMU documentation kind of sucks - too detailed and hard to get started. Hopefully you'll see this comment.

[vix]

So if anyone is installing qemu on Arch there are 2 qemu packages:

Non-headless (default) - qemu-base
This variant enables GUI features that require additional dependencies (like SDL or GTK).
Headless - qemu-desktop
This is a slimmer variant that does not require GUI (this is suitable e.g. for servers).

If you want to run it like in the video, you need the qemu-desktop package.
Note that headless and non-headless versions install commands with the same name (e.g. qemu-system-x86_64) and thus cannot be both installed at the same time.
(info taken from arch wiki)

[godnyx]

This is THE video about QEMU. Amazing job!

[saxinatr]

This is exactly what I needed. I couldn't get the Virtual Manager to work on OpenGL. My VMs always sucked and I almost gave up on VMs and instead was going to resort to dual boot.

This method made the OpenGL work. The experience is far superior.

Will you be creating a video for nvidia card passthrough?

[mrashad_com]

Great job, you saved me a lot of time, thank you
can you please add more parts about USB and networking?

[rogal_dorn]

Well explained and clear guide. Thank you so much.

[christopherburke]

Polished choice for background music! It enabled me to stick around, ultimately for me to summarize that I super appreciate your efficiency. Cheers.

[codebitcookie]

Amazing and concise video and overall channel. Love your channel, you deserve more subs :D

[aaryandhakal]

Denshi thank you so so so so sos os ososo much i installed my arch all thanks to you and i still follow and thank you so much i was totally caught up on fixing with all that spice server and all but just doing this gave me non lag experience thank you so much

[ricardokullock]

Only tutorial I’ve seen so far that does it on the command line.

I would be interested in seeing if an windows install would need any further configuration to run office/adobe smoothly

[jeremyng]

my man, u just earned a sub <3 thanks!

[orebi]

Awesome video! Denshi, I really like the way you instruct. Very easy to follow. Quick Question. How do export the virtual machine you have created into an html file to open it with Virt manager? Thank You in advance!

[michaeleconomides]

Thank you, only suggestion is remove the annoying background music.