1) install qemu, in particular we’ll need qemu-img and qemu-system-x86_64 e.g. pacman -S qemu-desktop qemu-img
2) get a small linux distro image, i’m using alpine so https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/latest-stable/releases/x86_64/
3) then create disk image with qemu-img create -f qcow2 alpine.qcow2 8G -f for format qcow2
4) boot with qemu-system-x86_64 -m 512 -nic user -boot once=d -cdrom alpine-standard-3.24.1-x86_64.iso -drive file=alpine.qcow2 -display gtk and optionally -enable-kvm flag if it’s supported on your machine
5) login as root user e.g. root
6) setup your distro e.g. setup-alpine
For running the vm you are done, but for my motivations of writing this post:
7) setup-apkrepos -c to setup community repo for apk and apk add w3m which we’ll use to view the page
8) curl -L https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/16/burdens -L flag for following redirects. you can also do curl -sIL <link> to see what redirects were happening, see man curl for what the flags are