Can Sunshine support two Moonlight clients on one server, or are there alternatives?

[eorp3]

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All Hello! I’m using Sunshine on Debian 12 with an AMD GPU in a headless setup (Xvfb) and Moonlight clients. I tried connecting two devices (1920x1080 and 1280x720), but they show the same screen and input. I tested with multiple instances but it didn’t work.

Question 1: Is it possible to connect two Moonlight clients to one Sunshine server with independent screens and inputs? If not, is this planned for future releases?

Question 2: Are there any open-source alternatives to Sunshine that support multiple simultaneous clients (e.g., two independent streams from one server)? I’d prefer solutions compatible with Linux and AMD GPUs.

System info:

• OS: Debian 12
• GPU: AMD (VAAPI)
• Sunshine version: v2025.122.141614
• Clients: Moonlight (Linux, Android)

Additional context:
I’d like to avoid proprietary solutions like Parsec and prefer self-hosted options. Any suggestions or workarounds are welcome!

[ReenigneArcher]

Sunshine doesn't create any vm or other type of sandboxed desktop for you.

[davidawesome02-backup]

Depending on your usecase, a program like gamescope to run a nested compositor would allow you to use singular programs, and despite me not testing at all (lol). Not sure if inputs from sunshine use xtest or if they emulate real devices, if so, you may have to wait for my upstream patch to hit gamescope, and use those options (would require dual nested gamescope, but would work) (one gamescope to make the first nested display, allowing the next gamescope to start with the args passed to bind to input devices).

I can test in a bit, but this is an option, using commands like:

gamescope --backend headless -- bash -c "sunshine ./config1 & path/to/game" may work.

Lmk if you need help, I dont really use sunshine but I saw this while looking into partydeck-rs -- issue: 12, and discussing integration with keyboards in issue 11.

My changes for keyboard / mouse evdev binding support are in gamescope#1897 if that ever gets merged.

[ReenigneArcher]

Not sure if inputs from sunshine use xtest or if they emulate real devices

On Linux, Sunshine emulates real devices using https://github.com/games-on-whales/inputtino/

[davidawesome02-backup]

In that case, waiting for my pull request to be merged is your best option, its a hacky one, but it should work @eorp3 .

You can compile from my fork if you want, and know how to, but this is prob a unsupported use case at the moment, so expect them to not support it well.

If you need help, feel free to ask though, I may be able to help as well.

Thanks for the info @ReenigneArcher, I just don't really use sunshine yet, despite wanting to start lol!

Because you have to find the input devices that were just created, start as:

gamescope --backend headless -w 1920 -h 1080 -- sunshine ./config1

then locate the input devices on host, and run the new gamescope instance under the first one via:

export DISPLAY=:2.0 gamescope --backend-disable-keyboard --backend-disable-mouse --libinput-hold-dev /dev/input/xyz,... -- /path/to/game

(this gamescope has to have my patches to allow all the mentioned options above to work properly, and isolate a single instance of gamescope)

Hope this helps!

[brokensyntax]

Just had a glance at your repos David.
Looks like your solution to multi-sunshine is derived from work you're doing to bring glorious split-screen couch gaming to SteamOS?
Amazing, one to watch for sure.

I stumbled onto this while looking for various methods of running sunshine headless, not liking the current options, this would probably achieve what I'm after.

[davidawesome02-backup]

@brokensyntax

Hey, good to see someone may be interested in this!

Yeah, I am trying to make split screen gaming work for games that don't natively have it on Linux via some patches and work. I currently am mainly working on https://github.com/wunnr/partydeck (and commits related to that project) because the dev is nice, and my C++ re-implementation you see on my profile was mainly a proof of concept. I hope to eventually add support for remote playing into these front ends, but I am still figuring that out, and trying to think about how it would work with the shear number of ports required for sunshine to work, and the fact that being able to use something slower like novnc (web based only, so it works on nearly any device) would be epic if I add controller support to the VNC control protocol and mod novnc a bit.

If I ever get around to it (I don't currently use sunshine, I just thought this was interesting); I would essentially be just launching it headless inside gamescope as you see above, but I will need to do more testing.

Sorry I cant be more of a direct help right now, I haven't had as much time to play around as I hoped!

[tp20c5]

It sounds like my question, finally launching multiple portable instances to allow multiple moonlight terminals to connect to different service ports. There’s a problem though, the portable instance seems to interrupt the stream after screen lock, and cannot recover after unlocking the screen. I don’t know if this is a problem with my settings.
qiin2333/foundation-sunshine#308

[KaiStarkk]

Easy with multiple GPUs so assume you're talking about single-GPU system. In that case, if you only need separate displays that's easy enough. Separate input is the difficult part.

If you want fully separate compositors (i.e. multiple logind seats), the limitation will be having multiple DRM master leases. Possible on enterprise GPUs, but not on consumer grade. For single-compositor, it could be done if the compositor you're using implements multi-pointer -- some VDI solutions do it I believe -- but while wlroots has wl_seat, it's not fully implemented in most compositors I know of.