Is any of Intel gen 11-14 with iGPU's SR-IOV (i915-sriov-dkms or Xe driver) any good for passing laptop screen between VMs and host?

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niall.keller

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Aug 20, 2026
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Hi. I'm interested in a non-standard installation of Proxmox PVE 9 on a laptop as a host (without any x/wayland), and spinning few VMs for daily work (instead of multi-boot) and numerous containers.
I want the laptop screen to be displaying VM while it's running, and bring back proxmox host console upon VM detachment from display or VM shutdown (if it's not possible to detach keeping it running).

Is there anyone with proxmox on a laptops with Intel 11-13 gen who managed to get it working seamlessly passign inbuilt laptop screen back and forward between host and VMs?
Is there anyone with Intel gen 14 who could do it?

I don't have any laptop yet, and thus trying to clarify what's the oldest laptop (that supports SR-IOV for vGPU) I can buy to make it possible.

Very old ones with GVT-g like Coffee/Comet Lake seems do not work on laptops with full flexibility - https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/a...shutdown-how-to-diagnose-whats-missing.182996 claims that using i915-sriov-dkms @weuquibegruddi could use inbuilt laptop screen (and keyboard and touchpad) for VMs, but could not bring inbuilt laptop screen back to host upon VM shutdown despite following suggestion that works for non-laptops.

As per https://github.com/Upinel/PVE-Intel-vGPU , newer Intel gen 11 Tiger TGL, 12 Alder ADL, 13 Raptor RPL are somehow different and newest of Intel (Gen 14+) even declares native SR-IOV in Xe driver, but not all of them work out of the box (14, 15 seems to work).
Anyway i915-sriov-dkms may be less relevant at least for some of those gen.

Just in case, I know that it's only Tiger Lake TGL 11th supports SR-IOV, but not Rocket Lake RKL
 
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I've not personally run a setup like this but it seems you would need a dedicated GPU to bind to, these posts might be helpful from a quick search:

Y

Thread 'Getting image from Proxmox host screen (Laptop)'

Hello, I installed Proxmox on my laptop. I installed the virtual machine on my phone. However, I do not have another device and I want to control the Windows 10 operating system that I installed on Proxmox from the laptop on which I installed Proxmox. How can I do it? Someone did it in the video below. But I don't understand how he did it.
https://youtu.be/pc68sflJano
https://forum.level1techs.com/t/how-do-i-use-vms-locally-on-proxmox/237046/7
 
JohnnieKF said:
I've not personally run a setup like this but it seems you would need a dedicated GPU to bind to, these posts might be helpful from a quick search:

Y

Thread 'Getting image from Proxmox host screen (Laptop)'

Hello, I installed Proxmox on my laptop. I installed the virtual machine on my phone. However, I do not have another device and I want to control the Windows 10 operating system that I installed on Proxmox from the laptop on which I installed Proxmox. How can I do it? Someone did it in the video below. But I don't understand how he did it.
https://youtu.be/pc68sflJano
https://forum.level1techs.com/t/how-do-i-use-vms-locally-on-proxmox/237046/7
Click to expand...
Are you sure the link is correct?

Unless I'm missing it, OP there asks for a similar setup, but ends up with nothing, not even close to the semi-working solution mentioned here https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/a...shutdown-how-to-diagnose-whats-missing.182996 , where the only problem is to return inbuilt laptop screen to the host (external HDMI display behaves as expected while duplicating laptop's inbuilt display)
https://forum.level1techs.com/t/the-virtbook-concept/237246 declares it as virtbook, but as the 99% of guides, the host system is bloated/poisoned by WM/DE that I don't want to do.

My hope is that newer Intel iGPUs gen 11th+ (via i915 drv or native Xe) behave differently than older ones from adjacent thread.

And that's the feedback I'm looking for.
 
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Is there a reason you couldn't run a lightweight Linux desktop, then run the VMs full screen when needed?
 
Because I don't want to poison host with any of wm/de packages.

I don't even want to think of wm/de security.
 
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Poison seems a bit harsh. Also, have you looked at what is required to properly secure PVE? It seems to have a lot of shortcomings out of the box.

Have you already considered Qubes OS?
 
J-Rod said:
Poison seems a bit harsh. Also, have you looked at what is required to properly secure PVE? It seems to have a lot of shortcomings out of the box.
Click to expand...
I had a chance once to experiment with adding minimal xorg (manual picking, no install-recommends) to my host and then cleaning it up afterwards as I couldn't find balanced set. My conclusion - no, thank you.
Even if Linux kernel is not the most secure thing in the world, I'm not ready to add X on top. I know Wayland is better in this regards, but "clean host" is the best concept for stability and security.
 
niall.keller said:
Qubes is a totally different story, how can it replace proxmox?
Click to expand...
For a laptop it is better suited than PVE - from my own limited experience. I have it on a Dell XPS15 and Qubes lets me run a highly secure environment. Each Xen Domain is similar like a VM. I have separate ones for disposable/trash/work/personal/trusted/vault and so on. In my specific case all of them are Debian, but it is no magic to install other Linux Derivates - and I also had Win 11 in a Qube, some years ago.

All Qubes share the same, physical desktop via "Dom0". Applications started on any Qube show up as a "normal" window. I can run five to 10 instances of Librewolf at the very same time and they all are hard isolated - not just separate browser sessions.

Disclaimer: my Laptop is more an experiment and not my primary one. And it has 32 GiB Ram, which basically is the minimum for running five to ten Qubes at the same time.

And, of course, your mileage may vary - depending on the actual use case...
 
Can we please come back to the question from original post?

Is there anyone with proxmox on a laptops with Intel 11-13 gen who managed to get it working seamlessly passign inbuilt laptop screen back and forward between host and VMs?
Is there anyone with Intel gen 14 who could do it?

PS. I know what Qubes/tails/ secureblue etc is, but I'm just fine with proxmox and don't plan to change hypervisor to anything else at the moment, as it's not about hypervisor itself, it's whole environment with community scripts etc.
The fact I want to keep host clean from X/Wayland doesn't mean I HAVE to switch to anything else.
 
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