Can I use this to create a kvm vm with part of my GPU to run 3D accelerated things?
Here's our current install documentation:
https://arccompute.com/blog/libvfio-commodity-gpu-multiplexi...
This will be updated against our GVM/mdev-gpu sources shortly but our current documentation still will get you to what you're asking about. :)
I think I will stick with the wine+proton hoops. I am even planning on selling my nvidia card to go with a RNDA2 GPU so as to have gpu drivers in the kernel.
Not taking away from all the work that goes into this -- and I love hacking away as much as the next nerd -- this is just a bit janky, or rather, I'm hesitant to try this on my main workstation.
One concern I had was having to uninstall the Nvidia drivers and used the patched ones?. How does that play with pkg manager updates and things?
Most package updates don't disrupt anything. Depending on the vendor driver you use (Intel i915, AMD GPU-IOV Module, Nvidia) kernel updates should be okay if we use DKMS. GPU-IOV Module works okay with DKMS if you know what you're doing. I can't speak too much to i915. On Nvidia DKMS is hit or miss but that depends on which driver version is used. Some folks report DKMS doesn't work at all, others say they've never had a problem with it. I think it also depends on the kernel version DKMS is compiling against as in some cases the driver hasn't been updated yet to support the latest kernel version.
We try to help with that by making patch files that run ahead of official driver/kernel version support (they basically just make the driver work on a newer kernel - that's all):
https://github.com/Arc-Compute/LibVF.IO/tree/master/patches/