FAQ

Why Spice?

Adequate user experience and the lack of a good solution for virtual machine remote access were what sparked the Spice project. To ensure that Spice is a success, the following project goals were set:

1. To deliver a high-quality user experience, similar to local machine, in LAN environments
2. To maintain low CPU consumption in order to have high VM density on the host
3. To provide high-quality video streaming

Why choose Spice?

• Spice offers greater user experience and increased usability and reliability
• Spice has a lot more space to evolve
• Spice is open source
• Spice architecture is cross-platform, allowing for greater interoperability

Under what license is Spice distributed?

Most of Spice sources are distributed under GPL v2. For some exceptions the project uses LGPL or BSD style licenses. Documents are distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license.

How does Spice work?

Download Spice for Newbies for information on Spice basic architecture, components, and features.

How do I get Spice?

Refer to our Download page or the Spice User Manual.

How do I use Spice?

Consult Spice User Manual for detailed information.

How can I contribute to Spice?

Your help and feedback are welcomed. If you are a Spice user, refer to the Documentation page. For developers, refer to the Developers page.

Spice has poor video performance

• Verify QXL driver is properly installed and running
• Try adjusting QXL video memory to 64Mb (see also discussion in https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=36186)
• Flash video playback produce worst performance when there is lot of overlaying 2d elements (statusbar, seekbar, ads, buttons etc...)

Which architecture can Spice run on ?

• the client can run on x86, x86_64 and arm architectures.
• the server does only work on little-endian architectures, and has mainly been tested on x86-64.

Where can I find support ?

Have a look at the Support page. It provides links to manuals, mailing-list, and bug trackers.