vfio-kvm VS evsieve

I wrote a tool a while back for managing VMs. It does a bit more but it would work for this situation. It will let you use any key or combo for triggering VMs.

I have a project that I wrote and use for managing my passthrough devices that can use an arbitrary hotkey. If you're an arch user, it's in the AUR. I have a new version in the works, but I'll happily help you with using it if you want.

This is the other tool I've seen that claims to do what you want but I've not personally used it https://github.com/dangle/akeydo

evdev would be the traditional way of handling a simple use case. If that's not working for you, or you want more features, I wrote a service called VFIO-KVM that you can try. It has the advantage of also being able to trigger programs (like ddccontrol for changing monitor inputs) when you switch between VMs.

I'm thinking about adding another example that would use the d-bus methods to switch the VM every 10 minutes or so.

Yes, those cards would work. You wouldn't need a hardware KVM either. I've written a small service that handles toggling between a host and a guest. Just one so far, but I'm adding multi-VM functionality because I have pretty much the same setup, although I'm using a small USB external video card for one host.

You've got a few options. I released a project not long ago specifically for this: vfio-kvm. It has a package on the AUR if you use Arch.

Same with evsieve: I can see the keys I press, like in wev, but the remap doesn't work for the keyboard or the mouse:

My best suggestion for you is to leverage evsieve: https://github.com/KarsMulder/evsieve

There are many other software tools such as https://github.com/jtroo/kanata and https://github.com/KarsMulder/evsieve. The main difference with 𝑥MK is that you can use native QMK and ZMK.

Ironically I know you can do this in i3 and xorg/gnome using xmodmap or editing the xkb file. I'm pretty sure wayland compositors should be able to read xkb-compliant files but the recommended way of loading that in is probabaly different between various compositors? You could also use a "second generation" interception tool that works at the event device level.

You might want to try evsieve, it even has an example about toggling devices and it concludes with a hint on how to get this to work for 2 VMs.

Evsieve is amazing in general you sould check it out 🙂

evsieve has solved that for me, as the virtual device created is always available; it starts when I log on my computer and stay open forever.

evsieve can remap. I haven't used it yet but you can find it here: https://github.com/KarsMulder/evsieve

If this feels a bit limited (you have a few predefined options), there's also evsieve. Which allows you to do a lot more (like selective key pass-through, shortcuts, etc.).