Arch Linux

srachko

Member

Registered: 2017-01-08

Posts: 7

Is it possible to use physical hardware with a VM?

I'm not sure if I am posting in right thread, but I ran into some pretty interesting problem...

I have a few pieces of hardware, which need a Windows enviroment and I'm curious if it is possible to set up a VM and then connect that hardware to the VM running a version of Windows in order to use that hardware.

I have a PS4 controller from Trustmaster and the software to edit keybinds, deadzone settings etc... runs only on Windows. And the same goes for the Avermedia Live Gamer Portable 2 Plus....

For the time being I would only like to know if it is even possible to pull off with using a VM or should I desecrate my PC with a dual boot setup?

opt1mus

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2011-12-31

Posts: 212

Website

Re: Is it possible to use physical hardware with a VM?

Look into USB passthrough in the VM settings, some have had success with that, manually adding devices.

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 19,774

Re: Is it possible to use physical hardware with a VM?

Sure.  That is part of the reason for running a VM.   I use Windows 10 on Qemu to run a few things

Ft_Prog from FTDI to reprogram EEPROMS in their USB to serial converters to set device and manufacturer names.
I have a cheap arbitrary function generator called an FY6800 that came with Windows only support software that i ran through the VM (until I wrote my own CLI version in Linux).
Obviously, one can also talk to Networked equipment, such as my Siglent digital storage oscilloscope.  It came with a windows only support package called EZ scope which works in a VM.
Lastly, I was having trouble at one point with Skype on Linux; I had no trouble installing it in a VM and using the USB web camera integral to my laptop on the VM.

In my case, I use QEMU with a spice backend.  I connect with spicy as a client.  spicy has a nice interface to control which USB devices are passed through from the host to the guest machine.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/QEMU#SPICE

Last edited by ewaller (2022-11-24 16:09:13)

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