Brussels / 1 & 2 February 2025

schedule

Mirror Hall: Building virtual network displays to bridge mobile and desktop


Wireless displays are something most of us use, but in a fragmented and proprietary landscape. We propose a new approach to virtual screen sharing between Linux mobile and desktop devices.

This solution uses a combination of video pipelines optimized for ARM and x86 hardware, D-Bus, and low-latency UDP streaming to create virtual “second monitors” and stream the desktop between peer devices. It is optimized to be usable even on low-power hardware such as the Librem 5, allowing us to repurpose older devices as secondary network monitors without proprietary tools. [2]

In this talk, I will try to demystify some of the technicalities required for implementing efficient wireless desktop streaming using GStreamer, PipeWire, and D-Bus. To this end, we will explore how to build network video pipelines from scratch, with a focus on minimizing latency and making good use of hardware acceleration. Finally, we will present the Mirror Hall app, an experimental GTK4 app that encapsulates the above concepts. [2]

Links: 1. https://notes.nokun.eu/post/2024-09-22-mirrorhall/ 2. https://gitlab.com/nokun/mirrorhall

Speakers

Photo of Raffaele Tranquillini Raffaele Tranquillini