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[SOLVED] Looking for an in home streaming solution (programming.dev)
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by Matty_r@programming.dev to c/linux_gaming@lemmy.world
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Hey all, I've got an under powered laptop that I would like to stream Steam games to from my main PC (main PC has an AMD 9070XT, laptop has something like an Nvidia 1660). What I need to do is still be able to use my main PC while streaming to the laptop at the same time.

I've looked at solutions like moonlight, and I don't recall it worked very well or didnt support having a virtual display. I don't know that this is possible on Linux, but seems to be pretty easy to do on Windows.

What are my options here? Is it even viable to have a fully usable desktop while also utilising the GPU to stream games elsewhere?

Edit: ended up using Wolf and seemed to work perfectly. Certainly good enough to do what I set out to achieve, thanks for the recommendation.

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[-] MrQuallzin@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

Steam's in-home streaming takes up both devices. When you're moving the mouse and pressing keys on your client (the underpowered laptop), it's sending those same key presses and mouse movents to the host (your gaming PC). Computers don't really respond well/aren't designed to have multiple users in the same desktop environment at the same time.

Another user linked Wolf which uses Docker containers, or you'd need to set up a virtual machine inside your gaming PC that would become the host instead.

Is it possible? Sure.

Is it viable? No.

[-] maxwellfire@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

This is exactly what Wolf is meant for. It works great!

[-] Matty_r@programming.dev 1 points 2 months ago

Looks confusing to setup. So there is a Wolf container which streams to a Moonlight client, but there also needs an Apps container with Steam preinstalled which is launched through the Wolf container?

[-] maxwellfire@lemmy.world 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

You only setup the wolf container and give it access to the docker socket to spawn more containers. Then when a user connects via moonlight, they choose an app via the UI, and it will spin up a container for that app with a virtual desktop just for them. Critically that virtual desktop will match whatever fps/resolution the client requests.

It does require some knowledge about docker to get setup, like how mounts work (so you can have files shared into the containers, etc). But it's pretty simple. You can basically just copy the docker compose file (or I use the podman quadlet file) and modify the paths where you want to save things and you're good to go. If you want to share the game installations with your main computer's steam, that's a bit more work, but also not too much.

There's very good support on the project discord as well if you have questions/issues

[-] Matty_r@programming.dev 1 points 2 months ago

Very cool. I'll give it a shot. Cheers

[-] RamRabbit@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I would say: Keep it simple and use Steam's in-home-streaming. Both computers will be busy playing the game (the beefy computer rending and streaming to the thin client). So it doesn't do exactly what you want, but it does let you stream easily.

[-] Matty_r@programming.dev 2 points 2 months ago

I'd probably have to still have a virtual display at the very least because the resolution of my main PC is ultrawide 3440x1440 and the laptop is only 1920x1080

[-] 4am@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 months ago

Do you want to still use your laptop for other stuff?

Doesn’t Steam have the SteamLink stuff open sourced? Can you just install that and make the laptop a SteamLink client? I think people do it with Raspberry Pis all the time

[-] Matty_r@programming.dev 1 points 2 months ago

Yea I will use it for other stuff.

[-] HelloRoot@lemy.lol 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Maybe if your cpu has graphics, you could run a VM and pass your dGPU to it and streams from inside the VM.

Otherwise I think the inputs will fight each other, even with virtual displays (one person using the pc and the other gaming via stream)

[-] Matty_r@programming.dev 1 points 2 months ago

Good point, so that would have to be done through a VM or that Wolf app

this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2026
5 points (85.7% liked)

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