Beginner's Guide for QEMU Windows 10 VM?

English Virtualization
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I know there are many other threads discussing this topic but I just never understand them.

Can someone help me with setting the virt-manager installation of Windows 10 for the best performance? I want to use it for Adobe software and running them in vritual machine seems more convenient than using dual-boot.

So I have acquired the Win 10 iso, I also have VirtIO iso somewhere (as I have read in some other guide that I should use these drivers for installation). What now?

I would appreciate a guide in bullet points just to what click and where and why.

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That is of zero value without the source URL.

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@voj0546 Do you want to use a separate graphics card for the Windows Virtual Machine? If so have a read here https://www.heiko-sieger.info/running-windows-10-on-linux-using-kvm-with-vga-passthrough/ Else skip those bits and rock on with the virtio part.

There isn’t much to do these days it should just work OTB if you use the Virt-Manager wizard. Make sure you add your user to the libvirt group and then can do everything as your user.

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I have windows 10 in qemu/libvirt vm for couple of years now. I remember nothing different from std vm installation using vm manager that was required for windows 10. My w10 vm install is fully licensed and activated.

Give it a try. You can always delete and start over.

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The guy also has AMD specific guide which reccomends GPU passthrough which is not particularly best option as I have seen elsewhere. I did as the guide told me and now I cannot change a single graphics settings in Windows because the driver setup doesn’t recognize a single GPU.

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The thing is that when I actually did so, I felt the performance is a bit off, for once I see screen tearing, secondly I feel that the mouse and other stuff is responding pretty slow.

My setup is (in general, not VM)
32 GB RAM
Ryzen 5 7600 6-Core CPU
Radeon RX 7800 XT GPU

So I don’t particularly struggle with laying off some performance, especially since I do not desire to work on Linux and Windows simultaniously.

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@voj0546 did you install the Windows drivers?

I prefer hardware passthrough if the hardware supports… https://forums.opensuse.org/t/december-2025-screenshots/190131/14

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@voj0546 the other option is to look at using flatpak bottles, I’ve had good results with some applications running with that?

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I have forgotten to install the VirtIO drivers so the screen is actually OK. I just wonder why I don’t see a single GPU in Task Manager. Just wonder how to use my GPU’s performance for the emulation without messing up the exclusivity of usage.

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@voj0546 you can’t unless you add another gpu and use vfio-pci

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Yeah. Well, since I do not have another GPU, I guess I will have to settle with using only RAM nad CPU.

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