Edit with solution: I’m dumb. Just use the default quickemu settings and only change "-device virtio-gpu-gl " to "-device virtio-gpu " and "-display sdl,gl=on " to "-display sdl,gl=off ". Although qemu will have a lot of overhead at boot, the CPU usage when on the desktop should not eat your linux host’s entire core. I also disabled Windows Defender, which I don’t recommend if you run random stuff from the internet (or open .xlsm spreadsheets), but it helps. I ran CTT’s windows debloat tool and removed edge because it was updating in the background for some reason. Even then Windows is still a last resort kind of machine when my desktop isn’t available, not an actual work OS.

Edit with solution 2: The above still sucks compared to using RDP. Use the above to set up Windows Remote Desktop, then use for example Gnome Connections to RDP into it. I had to forward the RDP port to the Windows VM for it to work.

I changed the line

-netdev user,hostname=Quickemu,hostfwd=tcp::22220-:22,id=nic \

to

 -netdev user,hostname=RDPWindows,hostfwd=tcp::22220-:22,hostfwd=tcp::3389-:3389,id=nic \

Then I just connected to 127.0.0.1 from Gnome Connections

=======ORIGINAL POST:

Hi, I have trouble running Windows 10 in QEMU on an old af thinkpad x200t. The issue is that it that my GPU only supports opengl 2.0, so virtio does not work. The best I could do is use these options:

-vga qxl \

-device virtio-gpu \

-display sdl,gl=off

and like 30 more which are part of the default quickemu configuration. The three mentioned are ones I changed.

With these options QEMU uses “just” 85% of my CPU so I can still do something on the linux host. The issue is that Windows is basically unusable because the one core it has is constantly occupied by rendering graphics even when just idle on the desktop.

At this point I have accepted my faith that this laptop ain’t usable for Windows virtualization but I thought that I would ask here before closing this case. So does anyone have a secret hack which makes pre core i series intel GPUs work with Windows guests in QEMU?

thanks for any tips

  • drwankingstein@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1·
    5 months ago

    why are you adding both qxl and virtio-vga? thats contradictory, no point in doing so.

    Windows guests don’t have gpu acceleration anyways via virgl yet. Just use virtio-vga and install the virtio-gpu dod driver

    • TMP_NKcYUEoM7kXg4qYe@lemmy.worldOP
      2·
      5 months ago

      Well I’ve run the fedora installer and it seems to kinda work. Although the guest core is still at 100% all the time, the scheduler assigns about 70% to the useful apps and the total host usage maxes at 90 % (usually is between 70 and 80 %) so I can still use the linux computer. Maybe I was just dumb and did not run the installer, or maybe it was just placebo. -it should be placebo, because I don’t think I would be able to boot with virtio otherwise.

      Anyways thanks for your comment, virtio without openGL is kinda usable-ish. It’s at least better for excel than wine + software rendering. Doubt I will use it to view autocad files but that’s to be expected.

    • TMP_NKcYUEoM7kXg4qYe@lemmy.worldOP
      1·
      5 months ago

      Thanks for your reply. I’m using it this way because the quickemu windows does not boot with qxl without virtio-vga and if I use virtio with “vga none”, the host core gets maxed out and both linux and windows are unresponsive. I’m guessing the virtio drive requires virtio-gpu too?

      How do I install the display only driver? I found this:

      https://github.com/utmapp/virtio-gpu-wddm-dod

      but it has no README. Is that part of the fedora installer? I would be surprised if it wasn’t included in the default quickemu installation. I’ll try running the fedora installer (when I get time for it) and reply to you again when I’m done.

      • drwankingstein@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        1·
        5 months ago

        The drivers are part of the Virtio driver pack, so you don’t need to do anything else aside from installing that.

        However, typically I don’t recommend this, since I am not thr biggest fan of them but VMware does have GPU acceleration. I’m not sure the required specifications for it, however, but it might be a decent option.

        • TMP_NKcYUEoM7kXg4qYe@lemmy.worldOP
          2·
          5 months ago

          Alright thanks.

          From what I’ve read you need an intel core i-* to run VMware so I wouldn’t meet their CPU requirements, yet alone the OpenGL 4.5 GPU requirements. For some reason they don’t support AMD GPUs and Intel GPUs aren’t even mentioned, which is pretty funny.