re-installed my old desktop with debian stretch (current stable), with liblo(-dev) from buster because it has a feature I need relating to OSC blobs.
the video part is running fine, using slightly lower quality settings than on my new desktop, but looking ok. maybe I'll need to adjust the output gamma when using a projector, on my TV screen the halo is a bit too present perhaps. I'm using the NVIDIA proprietary evilblob driver, as that's what I used when originally writing the code, and I don't know if the Free nouveau driver supports GPU clock frequency scaling for my hardware.
the audio part is running fine too, using the internal soundcard, no noticeable JACK xruns, which is nice (no need to use an external soundcard).
the interface part is running fine on my laptop sending unicast OSC to the desktop, latency is not bad. I had originally used broadcast OSC (to 255.255.255.255) but its latency was atrocious, up to 1 second at times.
the only issue I have now is that the laptop with the interface sometimes decides to switch to using a different wifi access point without my telling it to, which breaks everything.
next I need to port the interface to Android to run on my tablet.