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Wayland headless multi seat?
(sh.itjust.works)
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this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2026
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I would need to use the headless backend in kwin, which apparently isn't something you can do from start plasma-wayland but you can do with kwin_wayland --virtual -s waylandR. I can give it a specific socket (waylandR) which lets me point sunshine at that, but I cannot get moonlight to accept a PIN that way. it seems mad about this setup and I'm not sure why.
Do you actually need the headless backend? Or do you need a background session that doesn't interfere with the main session?
the physical display output is claimed by something else totally separate.
Anyway I did figure out how to the headless backend working, but I did not figure out the udev rules for this headless session
Allows Sunshine to access /dev/uinput
KERNEL=="uinput", SUBSYSTEM=="misc", OPTIONS+="static_node=uinput", GROUP="input", MODE="0660", TAG+="uaccess"
Allows Sunshine to access /dev/uhid
KERNEL=="uhid", GROUP="input", MODE="0660", TAG+="uaccess"
Joypads
KERNEL=="hidraw*", ATTRS{name}=="Sunshine PS5 (virtual) pad*", GROUP="input", MODE="0660", TAG+="uaccess" SUBSYSTEMS=="input", ATTRS{name}=="Sunshine X-Box One (virtual) pad*", GROUP="input", MODE="0660", TAG+="uaccess" SUBSYSTEMS=="input", ATTRS{name}=="Sunshine gamepad (virtual) motion sensors*", GROUP="input", MODE="0660", TAG+="uaccess" SUBSYSTEMS=="input", ATTRS{name}=="Sunshine Nintendo (virtual) pad*", GROUP="input", MODE="0660", TAG+="uaccess" SUBSYSTEMS=="input", ATTRS{name}=="Sunshine PS5 (virtual) pad*", GROUP="input", MODE="0660", TAG+="uaccess"
this is....not enough
Yes, and the above solution I laid out is a way to get around that, that potentially dodges the complexity of configuring a truly headless session. It's possible to run two KDE sessions at once, next to eachother, and then simply put one on the main display, with the second being "headless", and not shown.
I started fiddling with the above setup I described, actually installing and testing sunshine. Unfortunately I hit some hiccups. I got sunshine to run, but with no input, and then then it attached to the wrong KDE, even though it was streaming the correct one initially. Now I'm running the same KDE session as a different user (since I was on the same user before), but having pairing issues, but I suspect these are because moonlight is seeing the wrong SSL cert, since the sunshine as a new user generated a new cert.
Sunshine has some documentation gaps that are annoying to figure out but there enough there you can get it done with some effort. Moonlight feels really crunchy though. Edges are rough and it always felt unfinished. I really think selkies v2 is going to kill it.
Sunshine+moonlight is better for an app based deployment, like set top boxes without web browsers. But if you have a browser available on the client, I can see some crazy possibilities with selkies.
Gamesonwhales solves the sunshine multi user issue in a different way. It’s better for renting out your box as a node for cloud gaming. It’s damn near turnkey for that and super clever. But that’s not what I’m trying to do here so it’s just adding complexity.