Why This Matters
SPICE, the open-source remote display protocol widely used with QEMU/KVM virtualization, has been abandoned by Red Hat upstream, leaving Windows guest VMs without a maintained agent. A community developer has forked and mirrored the Windows vd_agent project to keep clipboard sharing, dynamic resolution, seamless mouse and file transfer working on modern guests like Windows 11. It's a reminder that critical virtualization plumbing often survives only through volunteer stewardship after corporate sponsors move on.
Key Takeaways
- Red Hat no longer maintains upstream SPICE; this fork is a community mirror of the abandoned freedesktop.org Windows vd_agent project, shipping via GitHub Releases.
- The agent preserves key Linux-host/Windows-guest features: client mouse mode, resolution matching, clipboard sharing, file transfer, and a per-session Windows service.
- It carries practical fixes and packaging care, including a multi-GPU mouse fix for passthrough setups, pinned spice-protocol/spice-common submodules, and a retained WiX UpgradeCode for clean MSI upgrades.
Spice VD Agent for Windows
Community-maintained Windows guest agent for SPICE. This repository is a public mirror of the abandoned freedesktop.org spice/win32/vd_agent project. Canonical downloads live on GitHub Releases.
The agent provides:
Client mouse mode without grabbing the pointer
Desktop resolution matching the client
Clipboard sharing (text and images)
File transfer into the guest
A Windows service ( spice-agent ) that starts vdagent.exe in each session
Status
Red Hat no longer maintains upstream SPICE. This fork keeps the Windows agent building and shipping for current guests, especially Windows 11 VMs on Linux.
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