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