Streaming

I used to stream as a hobby, and while I wasn’t consistent it was fun. I would stream a lot of things, though my favorite was Minecraft. However, when I switched to Linux, I lost any streaming consistency. Back then Nvidia support was quite frankly terrible, there was little to no Wayland support and while proton worked, it hadn’t yet received Battleye or Easy anti-cheat support. Though one good thing did exist, Nvfbc. Nvfbc is an API that captures the Linux desktop in an extremely efficient manner which allowed me to continue streaming despite being stuck on x11.

Wayland

In the present, the Linux desktop environment has evolved. Nvidia now has reasonable support for Wayland, Proton is now capable of running most of my Steam library, and Compositors like Hyprland provide a beautiful Linux desktop experience. But despite the level of support, I have neglected streaming.

OBS Studio

To start streaming again I need to setup OBS Studio, and I need to install and configure the following plugins:

• VkCapture
• WlrOBS
• input-overlay
• webkitgtk web source
• obs-multi-rtmp

Installation

Installation is straightforward thanks to home-manager. I can just add the following to my home configuration.

programs = {
  obs-studio = {
    enable = true;
    plugins = with pkgs.obs-studio-plugins; [
      wlrobs
      input-overlay
      obs-vkcapture
      obs-webkitgtk
      obs-multi-rtmp
    ];
  };
};

Setup and Config

After launching I am greeted with the OBS welcome guide where I can change a few basic settings like canvas size, and framerate, and set basic streaming to services like Twitch, YouTube, and others. After OBS does its self setup we are left with a blank canvas.

From Here I am going to create three scenes called desktop, in-game, and brb to serve as scenes for common activities because I haven’t really set up my Twitch or YouTube these scenes will only contain basic desktop capture via Pipewire, game capture using obs-VkCapture, and a basic brb screen.