Cloud gaming with Geforce Now

Community Guides
1

Hi, I wrote a long review about the cloud gaming service Geforce Now (by Nvidia) and I tried it on Qubes OS:

Here are the Qubes OS specific bits, to read after the review :slight_smile:

I wasn’t able to use a qube with a GPU, so this applies for all Qubes OS users :slight_smile:

As stated in the review, without hardware acceleration the web browser will drop frames and Geforce will reduce the quality until it gets better. Playing in 720p instead of 1080p allows to cope better with the stream and keeping a higher quality.

Xbox One USB controller doesn’t work in usb passthrough, it’s not specific to geforce now though, the device auto detach itself… However the Playstation Dualsense (PS5 controller) works perfectly fine if you pass it to the qube with Geforce Now :+1:

If you need a mouse, use an USB mouse and pass it to the qube with geforce now, the cursor will be captured by the browser focus and works pretty fine. Once you are done, the easiest method to get the cursor back to dom0 was to unplug the mouse and plug it back. :sweat_smile:

There was no issue with the keyboard :v:

Globally, this can be a cheap and practical way to play some casual game, but this is not practical for anything serious :confused:

4 Likes
2

I’m shocked no one in over a year and a half has had a single thing to say on this lol. Right now I’m really conflicted as to whether I should get a new gaming rig or use this service. I’ve used services like this in the past, like Shadow, but it wasn’t that great at the end of the day.

Are you still using this service? Is there any way to improve performance from within Qubes?

3

I’m not using it anymore for various reasons. On qubes os it would run better with a dedicated GPU of course, but then it’s a bit pointless.

4

Maybe not. What if I outfitted my rig with an old, say, 2070? I’d save a lot on the build, and I could devote the 2070 to a Geforce qube. Do you not see that as feasible?

5

Yes, it would allow you to play with GFN in full resolution and quality. Actually, a smaller GPU would be better if possible as it only need to decode a h264/h265 stream, but the 2070 is fine.

1 Like