// the find
mbroemme/vdi-stream-client
VDI Stream Client is a very tiny, low latency and GPU accelerated client to connect to Windows running Parsec Host.
A Linux CLI client that connects to Parsec Host running on Windows, letting you drive a GPU-accelerated remote Windows desktop from Linux with hardware video decode. It's built for developers who want Windows apps (Office, Outlook) on a remote VM/cloud instance while working day-to-day from a Linux laptop.
The video pipeline is genuinely deep work: it replaces the closed Parsec SDK's Linux FFmpeg decoder entry with its own, does metadata-only VA-API profile queries before connecting, and does zero-copy DRM PRIME import into Vulkan via libplacebo, with driver-specific handling for nvidia-vaapi-driver's DRM fourcc mismatches and pre-GFX9 RADV NV12 layouts. It's CLI-only by design (no Electron GUI), which makes it scriptable and window-manager friendly. USB redirection with hotplug monitoring and automatic reattachment on reconnect is a real feature most consumer streaming clients skip.
It's a wrapper around a closed-source, no-longer-officially-distributed Parsec SDK binary (libparsec.so) — the README even says 'those who fully rely on an open-source system, stop reading here,' and the 4:4:4 chroma mode that makes remote text usable requires a paid Parsec Warp subscription on top of that. Linux x86_64 only, no macOS/Windows despite the author's claim porting would be 'fairly easy' (no PR has proven that in practice). USB redirection has no encryption at all and pushes the WAN-security problem onto the user via 'just run WireGuard.' At 141 stars with one main contributor, this reads as a solo dev's personal daily-driver setup made public, not something with a support runway if the SDK mirror disappears again.