I’m considering to switch to Proxmox for my main PC, run a Windows VM on top and passthrough the GPU to play games. However, I heard anti-cheates aren’t that friendly to VMs. Had anyone tried this? Thanks.
I use Steam + Proton in an LXC so I can share the graphics card among several other containers. It works quite well with streaming once I got it set up.
Isn’t Proxmox intended for servers whose only use is to run VMs? Why not go for a traditional desktop distro like Mint and run KVM, QEMU, or VirtualBox on it?
Anyway, I have heard something like this, but it probably depends on the anti-cheat. Some might run in kernel mode to deliberately detect VMs. Others won’t care if you use a VM.
Proxmox runs KVM/Qemu in the backend, so it’s essentially the same thing. OP might want to have a machine in their rack they use for remote gaming for example.
Also don’t use VirtualBox.
It sounded like OP wanted to install Proxmox on their main PC, which would imply using it as a daily driver desktop OS, which it isn’t.
It is not but more like a building block for my daily driver.
I plan to use Proxmox VE to build a virtual infrastructure in one machine. It will have many VMs running and one of it would be my daily driver.
Ah okay, that makes more sense.
What is wrong with using virtualbox?
It’s subpar, closed source, kernel module installing, type 2 virtualization that makes users believe VMs are slow, when in fact Type 1 hypervisors usually achieve near 98% efficiency. And too boot it means that open-source projects like
virt-managerdon’t get the usership they deserve and need to continue being maintained.There is legit not a single reason to use it on Linux, and there hasn’t been in well over a decade.
Wow I didn’t even know it was closed source. Thanks for pointing this out, I will definitely be getting virt-manager.
It’s not entirely closed source, but the extension packs are. The other reason are the main one that should make you switch. Why use subpar software when there’s a better, trusted by the entire industry, alternative builtin already?
I am already spinning up a Debian vm. I had a minor issue with file permissions but it it is working great now and is definitely faster than I remember virtualbox being. I am so glad I saw your comment and I would switch to this even if Richard Stallman himself wrote Virtualbox and all the extensions.
It’s also a whole lot more flexible. And will easily do full PCIe passthrough with some more advance configuration.
virt-managereven works remotely over SSH if you have another machine you want to run your VMs on!
Can’t speak to anti-cheat, but I’ve run a Windows 11 VM with GPU passthrough on Proxmox. I got basically identical performance from the hardware, considering the reduced ram/cpu count in the VM. USB port passthrough was glitchy though. I didn’t spend too much time messing with it but it definitely was functional. Battlenet (World of Warcraft, Overwatch, etc…) worked fine. I don’t recall any game that didn’t run but, again, I didn’t do too much.
Video card passthrough can be a real struggle. If you are using Intel/Nvidia it will be easier though
I have proxmox running on a nuc and do a GPU passthrough to a windows VM. I haven’t encountered any anti cheat issues yet, but I honestly don’t game near as much as I used to.
All depends on the games you play, personally is mostly emulators and indie so there’s no problem. Generally the more online/micro transactions, the more hostile the game will be to vms
If you want a list just google what games can be played in a qemu vm
Surprised that nobody yelled Proton yet? Lots of Windows games running pretty good, some close to native, some even better on Linux through Proton. But here is the thing you mentioned which could be a problem: anti cheat. It works on Linux but depends on the developer to enable it. Some major games simply does not support it. You can check them here: https://areweanticheatyet.com/ , for general compability check https://protondb.com , even non Steam games can run through Lutris with little to no hassle. Proxmox with GPU passthrough seems like a big clunky overhead in terms of gaming but maybe you got that game that will never run on Linux.
Thanks for the information.
However, I’m not concern about Linux, Windows, or Proton. I’m fine on any platfrom that I can game on.
I’m concern about anti-cheat within virtualized environmnet due to my unpopular setup: a Homelab running services like PiHole and a PC for daily and gamming need all roll into one machine. The concept behind is configuration and data isolation (and fun).
