This is a dump of everything I've learned about running 64 bit ARM on QEMU.

General Notes

• I get the feeling that VGA isn't really supported on the -M virt machine. Closest I've been able to get is using ramfb, but I still can't start X. I think it might be best to use a specific qemu device such as a raspi.

Alpine aarch64 best settings

qemu-system-aarch64 \
    -M virt \
    -cpu cortex-a57 \
    -smp 4 \
    -m 4096M \
    -device ramfb \
    -bios /usr/share/edk2-armvirt/aarch64/QEMU_EFI.fd \
    -device usb-ehci -device usb-mouse -device usb-kbd \
    -drive file=alpine.qcow2

Links

• Overflow answer that helped me realize I needed a UEFI bios for aarch64
• Blog post that explained -serial and -nographic. Other useful things as well.
• Graphics explainer
• Details about different display options
• Explanation about lack of VGA on ARM.