How to Create a Virtual Display for Sunshine on Arch Linux - Anton Ždanov

https://www.azdanov.dev/articles/2025/how-to-create-a-virtual-display-for-sunshine-on-arch-linux

I wanted to create a virtual display for Sunshine and came across this article. It looks like no one has linked it here before 🙂

46 points · 12 comments · view on lemmy.world

12 Comments

nitrolife@hikki.team · 6 pts · 96d (4 replies)

You need virtual dislay so that meat that you don't connect video card to TV. Maybe best choice - use wolf? No DE, no display. Just GPU and podman.

Shatur@discuss.tchncs.de · 2 pts · 96d (3 replies)

Interesting tech! But my use case was to stream my desktop 🙂

Matty_r@programming.dev · 2 pts · 95d

Wolf is really cool. It allowed my low powered laptop to stream from my main PC, while the main PC is being used for other tasks.

nitrolife@hikki.team · 1 pts · 95d (1 reply)

Without display? Ok. But wolf can stream xfce inside podman.

Shatur@discuss.tchncs.de · 1 pts · 95d

Yeah I understand that it can install a DE into the container and stream it, but I wanted to stream my existing DE with the same configuration.

nfreak@lemmy.ml · 5 pts · 96d (1 reply)

Oh interesting. I've been doing this with a dummy HDMI plug for ages, and sure don't fix what isn't broken, but it'd be nice to set it up entirely virtually.

BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 96d

I've done both ways and the dummy plug is much less hassle in my opinion. Not a universal solution though. My GPU has only one HDMI port.

Cyber@feddit.uk · 5 pts · 96d

Hmmm.

I have an issue with my media PC where if it's turned on before the HDMI connected TV, then we can't see the display... I wonder if this will fix that issue too by pretending the TV is always connected...

technohacker@programming.dev · 3 pts · 96d

Something I noticed recently is that Sunshine has added support for XDG Portal Screenshare access, meaning on KDE you can actually screen share a virtual display without needing anything configured on the hardware. You need to use the xdg-portal capture method, but I've tried it out with my phone before

gaylord_fartmaster@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 96d

I found this article nearly a year ago and have been using this method since, it works great. I use it to play games at my phone's weird native resolution, and my wife uses it to play games at her macbook's weird native resolution.

I also have multiple systemd-boot configs to boot with or without it.

kcweller@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 96d

Pretty dope idea! Might try this out soon!

ChocolateFrostedSugarBombs@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 96d

Hey this sounds pretty great! I'm going to give this a shot.