Moonshine: Stream Games from Your Linux PC to Any Device with Moonlight
Moonshine: Lets you stream games from your PC to any device running Moonlight
I built Moonshine, a headless streaming server written in Rust that lets you stream games from your Linux PC to any device running Moonlight. It runs each game in an isolated session, so your host remains usable without needing a monitor. With support for H.264, H.265, and AV1 encoding, plus full input and HDR capabilities, it offers a seamless remote gaming experience on Linux.
Moonshine runs each streaming session in its own isolated environment, separate from your desktop, meaning your host PC stays usable while you stream and it works without an active desktop session.
- PalmPilotProMax
So, to sum up:
First there was Nvidia Gamestream, which was proprietary and later deprecated by Nvidia themselves.
Then came Sunshine and Moonlight, open source server and client implementations of the protocol to allow low latency streaming for all platforms.
Along the way the Game on Whales project started, to allow multi seat streaming plus virtual displays so currently logged in user sessions aren't impacted. Basically this is a whole "host your own Stadia/Geforce Now" solution. But instead of running already setup applications as an existing user, you run these curated containers of Steam, Firefox, etc.
Then someone forked Sunshine and Moonlight into Apollo and Artemis, to make streaming from a virtual display turnkey and OOTB easy. Sadly the virtual display feature of Apollo is in practice Windows only.
And then there's this, Moonshine, in a way doing what Apollo brings to the table but for Linux servers.
Oh, and along the way someone forked Apollo into Vibepollo, an almost fully vibecoded "enhancement". Personally not touching that.
Did I miss anything?
- hgaiser
Ah so this is where the influx of activity comes from..
Hi, creator of Moonshine here.
I'll try to answer some common questions here instead of replying the same thing everywhere:
What is it?
At it's core it's similar to Sunshine but with one important difference: Moonshine creates its own compositor and does not rely on an existing desktop environment. The benefits:
- You do not need a running desktop environment: it can run headless.
- The compositor is created with any resolution and any refresh rate, without requiring a dummy plug.
- Because Moonshine controls the compositor, it has HDR support out-of-the-box, even if your monitor does not support HDR (ongoing development, it works in the games I tested).
- If you do have a running desktop environment, you can keep using it while streaming a game at the same time.
On a more technical level: I like the narrow focus that Moonshine has. Only one encoder (Vulkan), only one OS supported (Linux), no GUI, no compatibility with old Moonlight clients. The codebase is intentionally "lean". Of course this also has disadvantages like requiring semi-recent GPUs & drivers, only working on Linux and newer Moonlight clients, but I can live with that.
Why create it?
The short answer: a lazy girlfriend and a stubborn Linux user.
The long answer: Moonshine is a hobby project that I've been working on for a few years (first commit goes back to 2022). It was (and still is) a fun exercise and helped me learn a lot, which if it never became fun […]
- BLKNSLVR
The Sunshine/Moonlight combo allowed me to stream emulated, upscaled SSX Tricky (PS2 game) from my desktop to an (at least 7 year-old) Android streaming box as smooth as silk.
The only downside was that the game had to be running, visibly, on the screen of the desktop machine, meaning the desktop is unusable for anything else - ie. if someone else wanted to play the game while I was working on the desktop.
This appears to solve that. Sunshine/Moonlight was already cake with a fair layer of icing. This is a sprinkling of glacé cherries on top. I love glacé cherries.
- aliasxneo
I use moonlight/apollo.
1. Connect my Dualsense controller to my macbook
2. Open moonlight on my macbook
3. Connect to my gaming desktop in full screen mode
3. Launch my AAA game on Steam
4. Profit
Over Wifi 7 I get basically no discernable lag, which was crazy to me the first time I tried it. I also have a Minisforum attached to my large screen TV and the process is identical except I push a different combo on the Dualsense controller to connect to the Minisforum. Because apollo saves settings, I can pretty seamlessly switch between the two with basically no issues.
- hankbond
> Moonshine runs each streaming session in its own isolated environment, separate from your desktop. This means your host PC stays usable while you stream, and it works without an active desktop session.
So does this create like a virtual desktop? How does that work? Is this just a separate "screen" or is this more like an entirely separate compositor instance (if thats the right term here)?
- esperent
I spent quite a while trying to set up streaming from my laptop to my phone using Sunshine/Moonlight. I never got decent results despite following tutorials that were supposed to make it all very easy.
Gaming is something I do to relax and I eventually decided it wasn't worth it since I had spent a week of my limited downtime messing around with codecs, latency, wifi settings, trying different apps, etc. and not gotten any kind of usable results.
I guess it was about three years ago. Have things improved since then?
- NDlurker
This is how people play Switch games on Wii U and 3DS. Emulate on PC and stream on the older systems
- Helmut10001
I am very happy with Moonlight/Sunshine combo. Runs neatly on my RTX 4000 Pro GPU Server. The only thing I miss is automated resolution adjustment to connected Clients, but I was able to script this with Home Assistent Windows client.