Spice is an open remote computing solution, providing client access to remote displays and devices (e.g. keyboard, mouse, audio). Spice provides a desktop like user experience, while trying to offload most of the intensive CPU and GPU tasks to the client.
Spice provides a remote desktop‑like experience by separating the server and client into distinct components: the Spice protocol, Spice server (libspice) and Spice client for Linux and Windows. It supports multiple channels for display, input, audio, cursor and playback, and offers image and video compression options to reduce bandwidth.
The manual describes how to obtain and build the required libraries (qpixman, qcairo, CELT, FFmpeg, log4cpp), install Windows drivers (QXL, VDI port) and the optional agent, and provides troubleshooting tips such as logging locations and debugging commands.
| Supported mouse modes | Server mouse, Client mouse |
|---|---|
| Image compression algorithms | Quic, LZ, GLZ, automatic selection |
Spice supports two mouse modes: server mouse (captured by the client) and client mouse (not captured, used as the pointing device).
Copy the qxl.inf, qxl.sys and qxldd.dll files to the guest, choose ‘Install from a list or specific location’, and point the installer to the directory containing those files.
On Linux the client log is /tmp/spicec.log; on Windows it is %temp%\spicec.log.