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Comment by atq2119 | Hacker News Reader

> VFIO is virtualization where hardware is passed through to the guest OS. I use KVM+qemu on Linux and attach PCI devices like GPU and storage to the VMs. This is a native Windows game build on a Windows VM on a Linux host. It performs within a tight few percent of bare metal Windows, and the host is fully functional while in use.

How about displays, though? It doesn't seem like you could have a proper integrated desktop between host and VM when using VFIO.

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I haven't tried it personally, but I believe the Looking Glass project https://looking-glass.io/ is attempting to solve this.

Lookingglass, as another user mentioned, peers directly into the framebuffer for an effectively latency-free display experience on the host.

You can also connect the graphics device that's passed through to an external display.

As an example, my SO and I can both play a multiplayer game from the same computer this way. I can use a VM with lookingglass on my Linux host while she uses a monitor connected to the GPU her VM has attached, along with a passed-through hub with mouse and keyboard.

It helps that Threadripper has two NUMA nodes, but it's possible on any system with good IOMMU grouping.

> As an example, my SO and I can both play a multiplayer game from the same computer this way. I can use a VM with lookingglass on my Linux host while she uses a monitor connected to the GPU her VM has attached, along with a passed-through hub with mouse and keyboard.

You could also run regular multi-seat Linux with such a setup.

It should also be possible to do it without multiple GPUs, but that's unfortunately more involved (if anyone has a simple way to do this in wayland land, I'm all ears!).

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