OpenAI Codex Helps Uncover & Fix A Nearly 20 Year Old Radeon Linux Driver Bug
Sent out today was the latest batch of AMD kernel graphics/compute driver patches destined for the Linux 7.5 merge window opening up at year’s end/ Besides a lot of fixes and continued work around new IP enablement for upcoming GPUs, there is even a fix for old ATI/AMD Radeon R600 era hardware after help from OpenAI’s Codex… ⌘ Read more
NVIDIA NvRoot & ForgePtr Vulnerabilities Published For Linux Driver, 25 More Coming
In addition to Jensen Huang resigning, coincidentally the embargo just expired on the first two of 25 more NVIDIA graphics driver security vulnerabilities coming. ForgePtr and NvRoot are particularly volatile for those renting GPU slices in the cloud… ⌘ Read more
Intel Xe Driver Preparing SR-IOV Provisioning For vGPU Profiles
With the upcoming Linux 7.5 kernel cycle the Intel Xe graphics driver is preparing SR-IOV provisioning for vGPU profiles… ⌘ Read more
Blender 5.3 Released With Nvidia DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction, Vulkan Default
Blender 5.3 has been released with support for 3D Gaussian Splats, Nvidia DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction and Vulkan as the default graphics backend on Linux. Phoronix reports: Blender now allows importing Gaussian Splats from PLY, SPZ, and glTF files. Also new to Blender 5.3 is NVIDIA DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction support as a new … ⌘ Read more
Mesa 26.3.0 arrives with many Linux graphics driver enhancements
While there’s no announcement for it yet, the Mesa 26.3.0 open source drivers release is tagged and out now. Bringing many enhancements for gamers!
Read the full article on GamingOnLinux. ⌘ Read more
AMDGPU Linux Driver Patches Posted For Enabling GFX13 Graphics IP - RDNA5
Since the beginning of the year there have been AMDGPU LLVM back-end patches for GFX13 as AMD’s next-generation graphics IP. This is most likely for RDNA 5 graphics. Now out today are the GFX13 patches finally surfacing for the AMDGPU Linux kernel graphics driver… ⌘ Read more
Linux Seeing Driver Work For MSI Mystic Light On Latest Ryzen Motherboards
MSI’s latest Ryzen motherboards with AMD 800 series chipsets feature a new capability marked as Mystic Light for RGB lighting controls of the motherboard as well as compatible graphics cards and cases. MSI Mystic Light control software is only offered for Microsoft Windows but thanks to an open-source developer with the help of Claude Code, a Mystic Light open-source driver is being worked on for the Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more
AMD PerfOpt Performance Boosting Code Tweaked For Linux 7.4-rc2
Of the many exciting changes in Linux 7.4, one of the exciting out-of-the-box performance improvements is the new “PerfOpt” functionality for AMD SoCs with integrated Radeon graphics. AMD PerfOpt can deliver some nice iGPU performance improvements especially for AI/LLM workloads. With today’s Linux 7.4-rc2 kernel release there are a few tweaks to the PerfOpt code in the IOMMU area… ⌘ Read more
Vulkan 1.4.368 Released With New Extensions From Valve & NVIDIA
Vulkan 1.4.368 is out as the newest weekly spec update for this high performance graphics and compute API… ⌘ Read more
Experimental Project Gets Intel XeSS On XMX Working With Valve’s Steam Play (Proton)
Last month I wrote about Intel working on adding proper XeSS support to Steam Play (Proton). While those efforts haven’t yet been completed for benefiting Linux gamers running Intel Arc Graphics, in the meantime an independent open-source developer has managed to get XMX-accelerated XeSS working under Proton… ⌘ Read more
RadeonSI & RADV Now Enabling D16 Support For GFX8 Era GPUs
Thanks to the latest work by Georg Lehmann of Valve’s Linux graphics team, the AMD GFX8 generation of GPUs that stretch from GCN Volcanic Islands through Polaris GPUs is still seeing improved Linux support. The latest work to land and benefiting both RadeonSI OpenGL and RADV Vulkan is enabling D16 support… ⌘ Read more
In more frustrating news, I did something to my primary laptop, and now it crawls along like a 2005 Celeron trying to run Windows Vista.
My laptop is nothing too special (a Lenovo powered by an i7-1255U (4+8) @ 4.70 GHz with integrated “Iris Xe” graphics), but I’ve been running Manjaro Linux (with KDE Plasma) on it for the past couple of years, and apart from the odd pamac / pacman / “Add Remove Software” inconsistency (or Plasma widget issue), it’s been running pretty well.
Then, a few days ago, it started bugging about updates, and yesterday it added complaints about an unsupported kernel, so I finally pulled the trigger on it, and boy do I regret it.
I initially kept having issues downloading all of the updates (it was trying to download some kind of non-existent Quake-related library, which I had to remove), and I also had issues getting rid of the unsupported 7.1 kernel (due to some “meta” packages that had been installed), but in the end, I resolved both issues, got the kernel removed and the updates installed, and everything seemed fine after the post-update reboot… for about 10 minutes.
And that’s when the machine just decided to start moving at 1/3 speed: typing, moving the cursor, changing windows - everything started acting like it was 2008.
When I first tried to diagnose it, top showed kwin_wayland eating 50% of the CPU, and plasmashell another 10%, but it wasn’t consistent (they both came and went). I disabled all of the desktop effects, which helped some, as did blanking my plasma config (setting my desktop back to default), but things are still noticeably laggier than they were a few days ago.
Someone online suggested freeing up 25% space total on my root drive (which typically runs 90-95% full), so I’ve been cleaning up (and offloading) as much as I can. If that doesn’t work and I don’t find a solution by the end of the week, I’ll probably have to backup my data, wipe the machine clean, and start fresh. 🙃
AMD PerfOpt Makes it Into Linux 7.4 As A Nice Performance Boost For AMD iGPUs
As anticipated, the AMD PerfOpt feature was picked up for the Linux 7.4 kernel. As shown already in multiple Phoronix benchmarks, AMD PerfOpt makes for a nice performance boost for AMD integrated graphics, especially for AI workloads… ⌘ Read more
Vulkan 1.4.367 Released With VK_KHR_maintenance12
Vulkan 1.4.367 is out this morning as the newest spec revision for this high performance graphics and compute API… ⌘ Read more
Mesa 26.2.6 brings fixes for The Witcher 3 Remastered and various other Linux driver issues
Mesa 26.2.6 is out now as the latest upgrade for Linux open source graphics drivers, focused on fixing up some bugs reported.
Read the full article on [GamingOnLinux](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/10/mesa-26-2-6-brings-fixes-for-the-witcher-3-remaster … ⌘ Read more
Graphics/NPU Driver Changes Already Begin Queuing Up For What Will Be Linux 7.5
Since last week drm-misc-next pull requests have already been sent out to DRM-Next to begin staging new feature code for what’s intended for the Linux 7.5 kernel cycle kicking off at the end of the year… ⌘ Read more
Firefox 159 Released With AMD Linux Graphics Fix For Excessive Memory Use
Firefox 159 is out today as the latest bi-weekly feature release for Mozilla’s web browser… ⌘ Read more
Mesa 27.0 Switching To Kraid Compiler By Default For Arm Mali GPUs
In development for a number of months now has been Kraid as a modern graphics compiler for recent Arm Mali GPUs. Kraid was merged for Mesa 26.2 back in June while in Mesa 27.0 due out in Q1 it will be switching to this new shader compiler by default… ⌘ Read more
Nouveau-DKMS Aims For Better NVIDIA Open-Source Experience On Old GPUs
Nouveau-DKMS is in development as an out-of-tree spin-off of the open-source NVIDIA “Nouveau” driver focused on providing better support for NVIDIA GeForce 400/500 “Fermi” series graphics processors and potentially other generations too pre-Turing where the modern Nova driver is in development by NVIDIA… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.4 Graphics Driver Changes Headlined By AMDGPU HDMI 2.1 Features
Merged overnight were all the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) driver updates consisting of many kernel graphics/display driver improvements. Arguably most exciting with these updates for Linux 7.4 is the AMD Radeon (AMDGPU) driver seeing HDMI 2.1 FRL enabled by default along with other HDMI 2.1 features… ⌘ Read more
Singapore Boffins Weave a GUI Into Fabric
Researchers at the National University of Singapore have developed a machine-washable electronic fabric that can turn clothing into an interactive graphical user interface. The prototype reportedly survived 50 gentle machine washes and 1,000 bending cycles, though it still relies on external batteries and controllers. The Register reports: The development could lead - at some point - to a “f … ⌘ Read more
Mesa Loosens Rules Around AI Agents For Code Comments / Commit Messages
The Mesa 3D graphics driver project has loosened its rules laid out in their AGENTS.md for AI agents to permit AI/LLM assistance in generating code comments and commit/patch messages, as long as a human is ultimately reviewing/editing it in the end… ⌘ Read more
AMD Is Bringing FSR 4.1 to Xbox Consoles and Handhelds
AMD is expanding its FSR 4.1 upscaling technology beyond Radeon RX 9000-series GPUs to Xbox Series X/S consoles, Xbox Ally handhelds, laptops, and Radeon RX 6000-series graphics cards. The Verge reports: AMD launched its FSR 4.1 update for Radeon RX 9000-series graphics cards in March, and promised to bring the technology to older GPUs and handhelds this year. FSR 4 … ⌘ Read more
OpenBSD 8.0 Released
OpenBSD 8.0 has been released with major virtualization and hardware upgrades, including support for up to 64 vCPUs per VM, Intel Arc graphics, ARM64 hibernation, and expanded RISC-V support. Linuxiac points out that it marks the “61st release of the security-focused Unix-like operating system.” From the report: Several fixes improve compatibility with 32-bit Linux guests, while changes to virtual machine ownership management and inte … ⌘ Read more
Steam For Linux Finally Goes 64-Bit
Valve has released a new Steam Client beta that finally moves the Linux client to 64-bit architecture, while also placing it inside a containerized Steam Runtime environment. However, Linux users still need 32-bit libraries and graphics drivers for compatibility, meaning fully 64-bit-only systems remain unsupported. VideoCardz.com reports: Valve’s updated requirements explicitly state that 64-bit-only … ⌘ Read more
Intel LLM-Scaler-vLLM PV 1.5 Brings Big Improvements
Intel software engineers today released the latest version of LLM-Scaler-vLLM PV 1.5, their containerized Docker stack providing a convenient AI/LLM experience atop Intel Arc Graphics hardware and born out of their Project Battlematrix initiative… ⌘ Read more
Intel Nova Lake S & Nova Lake P To Support SR-IOV With Xe Graphics
A patch has been posted to the Linux kernel mailing list by an Intel engineer confirming that Nova Lake S and Nova Lake P processors with integrated graphics will support SR-IOV in conjunction with the Xe kernel graphics driver… ⌘ Read more
AMD Caps Off Linux 7.4 Graphics Driver Development With More HDMI 2.1 Fixes
AMD on Thursday sent out a final pull request of their feature work aiming to be submitted for the upcoming Linux 7.4 merge window. This round of “few last odds and ends” is mostly about landing some bug fixes but of which there are a few worth mentioning… ⌘ Read more
Vulkan API Improvements Coming For The AMD Polaris GPUs With Mesa RADV
Timur Kristóf of Valve’s Linux graphics team has done an incredible job improving older AMD GPU support under Linux with migrating GCN 1.0/1.1 era hardware to the modern AMDGPU kernel driver and an assortment of other improvements for various older Radeon GPUs. The newest work is on enhancing the RADV Vulkan driver support for old Radeon RX 400/500 “Polaris” graphics cards… ⌘ Read more
AMD ROCm vs. Vulkan Performance For Lemonade Local AI Server With Llama.cpp
A Phoronix Premium reader recently inquired about seeing some new benchmarks of AI performance between Vulkan and AMD ROCm back-ends to see how the situation plays out today. Here are some fresh benchmarks on two separate systems with AMD Radeon graphics and using the Lemonade local AI server while exploring the difference between the ROCm and Vulkan Llama.cpp back-ends. ⌘ Read more
The Amazing Work By Valve’s Timur Kristóf On Improving Old AMD GPUs On Linux
Over the past year Timur Kristóf of Valve’s Linux graphics driver team has made multiple very nice improvements to the AMDGPU kernel driver for enhancing support for old (GCN 1.0/1.1 era from a decade ago) graphics cards so that they can better handle Linux gaming and other tasks. This week in Toronto, Kristóf presented on this AMDGPU work that he initially began as a kernel driver development exercise after initially spending years i … ⌘ Read more
Intel Iris Open-Source Driver Now Supports Efficient 64-bit Addressing Mode
As a follow-up to the news one month ago of Intel Nova Lake P’s graphics introducing a new 64-bit GPU mode, the latest driver-side enablement has now landed for Intel’s Iris Gallium3D OpenGL driver for supporting efficient 64-bit addressing… ⌘ Read more
Qualcomm Continues Doing More For Their Open-Source Linux Graphics Drivers
Rob Clark, who originally started working on the reverse-engineering Freedreno and MSM DRM graphics driver projects prior to even being employed by Qualcomm, presented this week at XDC 2026 Toronto around all the recent efforts they have been pursuing at Qualcomm for this upstream open-source graphics driver stack… ⌘ Read more
Valve’s Work On Foveated Rendering For The Open-Source Turnip Driver On The Steam Frame
As part of Valve’s work on developing the Steam Frame VR headset, they worked on foveated rendering support for the Mesa Turnip driver that supports the Qualcomm Adreno graphics with open-source Vulkan API support. Foveated rendering is the technique to more closely mimic human vision by rendering high detail at your direct gaze point and lower quality in the peripheral vision. For computer graphics, foveated rendering for … ⌘ Read more
NVIDIA security bulletin for Sept 30 notes many GPU issues
NVIDIA released a fresh security bulletin for September 30th that notes quite a lot of issues that have been found in their graphics drivers.
Read the full article on GamingOnLinux. ⌘ Read more
Mesa Developers To Work Toward Eliminating TGSI IR
TGSI was the intermediate representation (IR) developed for Mesa’s Gallium3D drivers by Tungsten Graphics at the time. It worked fine more than a decade ago but since then the Mesa front-ends and hardware drivers have largely transitioned over to the superior NIR format. Work is underway toward eliminating TGSI in the Mesa codebase… ⌘ Read more
AMD Boosting AI/LLM Performance For Radeon iGPUs As Much As 18~23% With Linux 7.4
If you have an AMD Ryzen laptop/desktop and looking to leverage AI/LLM capabilities with the integrated graphics, Linux 7.4 is going to be a real treat especially for lower-end hardware. AMD’s new PerfOpt feature being introduced in Linux 7.4 is set to provide some solid gains as shown in these benchmarks today across different AMD Ryzen/Radeon hardware. ⌘ Read more
Mesa 26.3 Enables Intel’s New Jay Shader Compiler By Default, Compile Times 55% Faster Or 66% Faster Than Windows
Over the past year Jay has been in development as a new open-source shader compiler for Intel GPUs. Alyssa Rosenzweig has been leading its development since joining Intel in 2025. For Mesa 26.3 the Jay shader compiler is being enabled by default for modern Intel graphics hardware and is around ~10% faster than the existing BRW compiler code… ⌘ Read more
AMD PerfOpt To Deliver New Performance Optimization For AMD iGPUs With Linux 7.4
Those using AMD integrated graphics on Linux such as the beefy Ryzen AI Max+ Strix Halo and Gorgon Halo hardware will be able to enjoy even better performance with the upcoming Linux 7.4 kernel… ⌘ Read more
AI Bug Fixes, Crescent Island Power Brake & Nouveau Fixes For Linux 7.3-rc5 DRM
The Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) subsystem fixes for the week are heavier on the side with many fixes to these kernel graphics/display drivers ahead of Sunday’s Linux 7.3-rc5 release… ⌘ Read more
Wisp Makes It Easier To Manage Btrfs Snapshots From The GNOME Desktop
Wisp is a new GNOME Shell extension making it easier to graphically manage Btrfs file-system snapshots… ⌘ Read more
AMD Sends Out New Linux Patches Further Enhancing HDMI 2.1 Reliability
Linux 7.4 is going to be the big kernel release where the AMD graphics driver will finally expose HDMI 2.1 by default and comes with features including HDMI FreeSync, VRR, and ALLM. Ahead of that milestone there have been various other last minute tweaks and improvements to its HDMI 2.1 support. Sent out on Thursday was the latest round of AMDGPU DC patches that includes a few more patches for improving the HDMI 2.1 reliability… ⌘ Read more
Intel Developing Their DXVK-IGDEXT For Improved Linux Gaming On Arc Graphics
Intel engineers have been quietly developing dxvk-igdext as their own component for DXVK Direct3D 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 atop the Vulkan API for leveraging Intel Direct3D 11 Graphics Extensions… ⌘ Read more
Qualcomm Posts Open-Source GPU Driver Patches For Adreno 850 One Day After Announcement
Yesterday Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 as quite an interesting mobile SoC. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 features Adreno 850 graphics and already one-day later their engineers are out with initial Linux kernel patches for bringing up the A850 with the MSM kernel driver… ⌘ Read more
Open-Source NVIDIA “Nouveau” Driver Sees Patches For HDMI Deep Color Support
The Nouveau Linux kernel graphics driver for open-source NVIDIA driver support has new patches posted for enabling HDMI Deep Color support… ⌘ Read more
Variable Refresh Rate “VRR” Target Limiter Proposed For Linux Graphics Drivers
A new proposal being discussed is introducing a Linux user-space API to be able to specify frame rate targets for Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) handling on the Linux desktop… ⌘ Read more
SPEC Releases SPECviewperf 15.0.1 For Linux
SPEC back in May 2025 introduced SPECViewPerf 15 as the newest major release of this industry-standard workstation graphics benchmark. Sadly, the Linux support once again fell behind with SPECViewPerf 15 only debuting on Microsoft Windows. Today though Linux has caught up with SPEC releasing a Linux-native build of SPECViewPerf 15.0.1… ⌘ Read more
ZLUDA Now Implements Some NVIDIA cuFFT APIs With hipFFT
ZLUDA as the open-source project working on CUDA for non-NVIDIA GPUs like AMD Radeon graphics cards now has implemented support for some of NVIDIA’s core cuFFT APIs… ⌘ Read more
AMD Begins Preparing Open-Source Linux Driver For Graphics Cards With GDDR7
AMD sent out their latest Linux kernel graphics driver patches today for enabling some new hardware IP blocks. And as part of that, preparing for GDDR7 video memory with the AMDGPU driver… ⌘ Read more
Intel Xe Driver For Linux 7.4 Adds vRAM Health Check, Degraded Memory Handling
Sent out this week were more Intel Xe kernel graphics driver changes targeting the upcoming Linux 7.4 kernel cycle. The theme this week was around dealing with video memory health and also being able to better deal with hardware degraded video RAM… ⌘ Read more