One issue with those "shortcuts" is that you'll end up with crazy arg strings consisting of 20+ cryptic parameters. qemu actually has sane defaults, so it's no

One issue with those "shortcuts" is that you'll end up with crazy arg strings consisting of 20+ cryptic parameters. qemu actually has sane defaults, so it's not that hard to launch a VM, if you don't need all fancy features (chances you don't). I'm not sure if it's really worth it to spend time reading qemu manuals. I did it and I'm using shell scripts to start VMs which is easier for me than learning another qemu wrapper. And I know that I'm using bare minimum which I like.