Theory time, I know hardware acceleration doesn’t work on Qubes for hardware accelerated transcoding something like steam link/moonlight isn’t possible.
However can you offload the transcoding to another device in Qubes safely? Similar to how people use Nvidia shields and FireSticks to take care of transcoding on TV’s that may not support it etc, when using Plex.
The issue is there’s no USB out streaming devices that I know of, they are all HDMI and computers don’t have HDMI in ports. One way to get around this is using a capture card but that is useless for Qubes as it just re-compresses it anyways and the client device still needs to transcode at that point.
Firestick or other streaming devices, DOES work with laptops/PC’s with one convertor adapter as far as I know here this adapter does decrypt HDCP content and is HDMI IN > USB OUT, everything else in the market is the other way around and any of them that are HDMI IN > USB OUT are HDCP compliant and won’t decode the HDCP content like the Inogeni convertors. It’s not very clear if this works like a capture card and compresses as well but it doesn’t immediately seem like it.
So let’s say the above convertor solution works, without adding compression and not needing to be transcorded by the client device running Qubes just a straight display signal. Can you actually do anything cool with that as far as streaming games, media, etc. off the device that does the hardware accelerated trans coding for you? Or is there additional security issues as well etc.
I found that Moonlight and Chiaki (for playstation) both work surprisingly well without hardware acceleration.
To answer your question, even if possible the delay would be too massive, and if you already have GPU passthrough for it, you should run the program in that qube.
delay within Qubes or network delay? If network delay I can confirm it’s not an issue with a good network. I use moonlight/steamlink on up to 4K 60hz with basically imperceptible delay. I also have a better than normal consumer network though, Unifi WiFi6 AP’s with good coverage. On Ethernet it’s hard to tell the difference from being in front of the machine running it. Now if you’re trying to use an online streaming service off the device that can be a little choppy at times but not terrible. Also not sure if it would be a good idea to connect a USB stream device to a Qubes machine that also has internet access. I would plan to use it on local network only out of my local library. I know I could just go game/watch media on the device that is natively running it but would like to be able to do it all off the same device. I have my work desktop setup similar where I pop between work and media/gaming and then back to work and I stream the gaming into that machine via ethernet off the media rack PC. Works quite well and keeps the heat and noise out of my office and has basically no performance impact on my workflow having it going in the back ground. If I could replicate that on a Qubes laptop I can walk around with that would make me happy. Obviously doesn’t do much for when your away from your network.
yea i was trying to figure out a way that wouldn’t rely on a GPU at all or need HW acceleration at all negating the issues surrounding those. It’s good to hear that Moonlight does work better than one may think without HW acceleration. I’ll have to give it a go and see how it works. I had searched and found a post earlier in here saying it doesn’t work so I assumed it just didn’t