Steam Frame Making Use Of Zink For OpenGL On Vulkan
Valve’s Steam Frame VR headset that makes use of a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC with Adreno graphics is using the open-source “Turnip” Vulkan driver from Mesa as reported last year. For OpenGL it turns out that the Mesa Zink driver is being used on the Steam Frame for OpenGL atop the Vulkan API… ⌘ Read more

Linux Ready With Fix For Intel’s FRED Crashing Some Games Under Wine / Steam Play
Recently there have been some bug reports to Mesa around Intel Panther Lake graphics crashing with some games like Red Dead Redemption 2 and Elden Ring crashing or freezing quite quickly. This turns out not to be an Intel Xe3 Arc Graphics B390 driver bug with Panther Lake but rather due to a kernel issue with the new Flexible and Return Event Delivery “FRED” that debuted with the Core Ultra Series 3 processors… ⌘ Read more

AMD Sends In More HDMI FRL Updates For Linux 7.4, Fixes For Upcoming Hardware
Linux 7.4 is set to be a very exciting holiday gift for AMD Radeon graphics customers. As covered last week on Phoronix, with this next kernel AMD Is enabling HDMI 2.1 support by default now that FreeSync, VRR, and ALLM support is included too. This week another round of AMDGPU kernel graphics driver updates were sent out ahead of the Linux 7.4 merge window in October… ⌘ Read more

Proposal Raised To Finally Standardize Video Memory Stats Reporting Under Linux
The idea has been talked about before but in 2026 still hasn’t made it to the mainline Linux kernel…. Standardized reporting of video memory statistics that would work across different vendors / kernel graphics drivers. A new proposal was raised today in an effort to get a standardized interface established… ⌘ Read more

AMD P-State Driver For Linux 7.4 Will Tune For Zen 6 Client CPUs
Linux 7.4 looks like it will be a very exciting kernel update for AMD customers. On the AMD Radeon graphics side HDMI 2.1 is being enabled by default with the AMDGPU driver with the HDMI FreeSync, VRR, and ALLM features in tow. On the AMD Ryzen client CPU side, there will be Zen 6 tuning with the AMD P-State CPU frequency scaling driver… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.3 Delivering Some Performance Gains On Intel Panther Lake / Framework Laptop 13 Pro
Linux 7.1 brought some performance improvements for Intel Core Ultra Series 3 “Panther Lake”, Linux 7.2 enhanced the performance for the integrated Arc B390 Xe3 graphics, and now for the in-development Linux 7.3 kernel are various performance improvements at large. Today’s article is looking at the performance of the in-development Linux 7.3 kernel compared to Linux 7.2 stable using the Core Ultra X9 388H within the Framewo … ⌘ Read more

Gitte As Git Client For GNOME Continues Maturing Quite Nicely
For those in pursuit of a graphical Git client for GNOME or the Linux desktop at large, the GTK4-powered Gitte continues advancing rather well and out this week is its v0.10 release… ⌘ Read more

Prominent Mesa Developer Now Working For Arm On PanVK & Panfrost Code
Erik Faye-Lund who has contributed to the Mesa 3D graphics driver stack working on areas like Zink and most notably the PanVK Vulkan and Panfrost Gallium3D drivers forr Arm Mali hardware is now working directly for Arm… ⌘ Read more

Patches Ready For AMDGPU HDMI 2.1 Enabled By Default With Linux 7.4 With FreeSync, VRR & ALLM
Linux 7.4 is now set to reach the elusive milestone of HDMI 2.1 support for the AMDGPU kernel graphics driver. After the HDMI Forum previously rejected HDMI 2.1 for the AMDGPU open-source driver implementation going back years, earlier this year something changed – widely speculated to be with Valve’s involvement – that HDMI 2.1 patches began appearing for the AMDGPU driver. With the upcoming Linux 7.4 cycle, the b … ⌘ Read more

Mesa 26.3 RADV + RadeonSI Ready With DRM Format Modifiers For Older AMD GPUs
Coming with Linux 7.3 is DRM format modifiers for GFX6 through GFX8 era GPUs covering the original Raddeon HD 7000 (GCN 1.0) graphics cards up through the Polaris and Fiji series. This work by Valve’s Timur Kristóf is necessary for these older GPUs to support Vulkan-based Wayland compositors, better interoperability between OpenGL and Vulkan or other APis, compositors running on the Zink OpenGL-on-Vulkan driver implementation, and o … ⌘ Read more

System76 Launches The Thelio Mira AI With AMD Ryzen + NVIDIA Or AMD Graphics
System76 today unveiled their newest desktop computer as the Thelio Mira AI. The System76 Thelio Mira AI is designed for multi-GPU AI training, model fine-tuning, AI inferencing, computer vision and image generation tasks on tthe AI side. Or with its AMD Ryzen 9000 series CPU and NVIDIA/AMD GPU options is also a good candidate for simulations and other HPC-type workloads… ⌘ Read more

New Patches Provide HDMI 1.4 3D Mode Support For AMD Radeon Graphics On Linux
It turns out one of the feature limitations of the AMDGPU Linux graphics driver is HDMI 1.4 3D output support with frame packing, top-and-bottom, and side-by-side options for transmitting simultaneous video streams. I wasn’t aware of this limitation for the lack of any 3D displays and many Linux enthusiasts/gamers as well, but if you happen to have a compatible HDMI 1.4 3D display, there are pending patches to finally make this a reality … ⌘ Read more

DirectX Support Promoted To Official Target Within LLVM
Over the past four years there has been a lot of work on a DirectX back-end within the LLVM compiler stack. Microsoft has backed the initiative for being able to lower LLVM IR into the DirectX Intermediate Language (DXIL) for execution by Windows DirectX 12 graphics drivers. This back-end is now officially supported… ⌘ Read more

2026 Hugo Award Winners Include Ursula Le Guin-Authored Graphic Novel
This year’s Hugo Award winners were announced last weekend at Worldcon — the world’s longest-running science fiction/fantasy convention. The Orange County Register reports there were fans “clad in capes, gowns and elaborate character costumes,” with famous attendees including Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin, who held a book s … ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA Posts vGPU Manager & VFIO Variant Driver For Open-Source Nova
NVIDIA continues building out more functionality around the open-source, upstream Nova kernel graphics driver within the Linux kernel. Making it out to the mailing list this Saturday is a set of 13 patches for introducing a NVIDIA vGPU manager and VFIO variant driver… ⌘ Read more

Mesa 26.3 Preps For Intel Nova Lake P’s New 64-bit GPU Mode
Merged overnight for Mesa 26.3 are changes to Intel’s graphics compiler code for supporting a new 64-bit shader addressing mode. It turns out with upcoming Nova Lake P graphics will be a big fundamental change… ⌘ Read more

Vulkan 1.4.362 Released With New Extension Developed By Valve
Vulkan 1.4.362 is out this morning as the newest routine spec update. Making Vulkan 1.4.362 more notable beyond a couple bug fixes are two new Vulkan API extensions, both of which were worked on by Valve’s Linux graphics team and one of them being a Valve vendor extension… ⌘ Read more

Intel Improving Its Content Match Refresh Rate “CMRR” Feature With Linux 7.4
Introduced with the Xe2 Lunar Lake graphics hardware was support for Content Match Refresh Rate (CMRR) as an improvement over typical Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) / Adaptive-Sync to more precisely match the video or content frame rates. Particularly for video playback it aims for no stuttering or frame drops. With the upcoming Linux 7.4 kernel will be better support for CMRR with the Intel graphics driver… ⌘ Read more

Mesa 26.2.2 Enables Intel Nova Lake Graphics By Default
Mesa 26.2.2 is out today as the newest bi-weekly stable point release for these open-source OpenGL and Vulkan drivers… ⌘ Read more

Intel Updates LLM-Scaler-vLLM Build For vLLM 0.26 & Other Improvements
For those looking for the smoothest experience to get vLLM up and running on Intel Arc (Pro) graphics hardware, out today is the newest beta of Intel’s LLM-Scaler-vLLM project for a Docker-based setup of vLLM ready to go on Intel GPUs… ⌘ Read more

AMDGPU Linux Driver’s Latest Patches For HDMI Passive VRR Support
As part of AMD’s ongoing effort for getting HDMI 2.1 support squared away in their upstream AMDGPU kernel graphics driver, sent out today were the latest patches around passive variable refresh rate “Passive VRR” for HDMI connections… ⌘ Read more

Intel Graphics Driver Introducing Cold Reset Recovery For Linux 7.4, Panther Lake IBC v3
While the Linux 7.3 merge window just wrapped up this weekend, on Monday Intel already sent out their first feature pull request of new Xe kernel graphics driver material that is destined for Linux 7.4… ⌘ Read more

@david@daiwei.me

I wish I knew

Just give it a go. This stuff is super cheap. All you need is a “pen”, some nibs, ink, and paper. Costs like 20-30 bucks and lasts for several years. The hardest part is finding good paper, really, because most paper these days isn’t made for ink anymore. 🥴

And since social media is always only full of good results, here’s something “shitty”:

These are my first experiments in 2016 – and that’s after having practiced with a graphics tablet on a PC for a couple of weeks. 😅

A Faster Merge Sort For Mesa 26.3 Vulkan Drivers To Benefit Ray-Tracing
One of the latest optimizations to the Mesa Vulkan drivers by Natalie Vock of Valve’s Linux graphics team is faster and more vRAM efficient sorting for Morton code keys that are important for fast BVH construction and greater GPU parallelism… ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA VA-API Driver 0.0.18 Ships More Fixes, Chrome/Chromium Decode On Direct Backend
Firefox has finally begun supporting Vulkan Video decoding to complement their long-used VA-API support on Linux. This is good news for the official NVIDIA Linux graphics driver stack as it’s been the notable vendor not supporting the Video Acceleration API. But prior to Firefox rolling out its experimental Vulkan Video support, an independent implementation of VA-API built atop NVIDIA’s NVDEC interface has been available fo … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.3-rc1 Close To 41 Million Lines, AMD Kernel Graphics Driver At 6.5 Million Lines
With Linus Torvalds remarking in the Linux 7.3-rc1 release announcement of the AMD kernel graphics driver changes for amounting around a third of the -rc1 changes due to the big AMD GPU register files for DCN 6.0 and other new IP additions, here are some fresh code stats at large… ⌘ Read more

ReactOS 0.4.16 Released With New Graphical Installer, Better Hardware Support
ReactOS 0.4.16 released today as the newest major update to this “open-source Windows” project providing an open-source OS with Windows driver and application compatibility… ⌘ Read more

HP Z4 G6i: A Linux-Friendly Workstation Powered By The Intel Xeon 600 Series
The past month I have been testing out the HP Z4 G6i workstation across many different workloads and grueling tasks. This HP workstation powered by the Intel Xeon 600 series “Granite Rapids WS” and NVIDIA RTX graphics offers a lot of compute power, but with the top-end configuration retailing for over $41k USD is quite pricey in today’s environment. Windows 11 Pro is the default operating system of the HP Z4 Gi but Ubuntu LTS releases are supported a … ⌘ Read more

DisplayPort 2.1 ALPM Still Being Worked On For Intel Xe3P / Nova Lake
The in-development Linux 7.3 kernel is marking Nova Lake Xe3P graphics as stable in being enabled by default and no longer hidden behind the “force probe” flag. While on-by-default, there still are some features that have yet to land like the DisplayPort 2.1 ALPM functionality… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.3 Delivers Graphics Driver Improvements From Old GPUs To Next-Gen Hardware
The Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) subsystem updates have been merged for the ongoing Linux 7.3 merge window. There is a lot of exciting GPU kernel driver improvements this cycle ranging from some notable enhancements to old AMD Radeon graphics hardware up through enabling support for some next-generation AMD graphics IP blocks to over on the Intel side where Nova Lake S graphics are being enabled by default… ⌘ Read more

AMD RDNA 4m Firmware Published For Linux Ahead Of Launch
In addition to AMD’s Friday afternoon big code drop of all the UALink enablement patches for the Linux kernel and the AMDGPU driver, there was another big drop from AMD to end out the week… Upstreamed to the linux-firmware.git repository is all the firmware binaries needed by the open-source driver stack for initializing their forthcoming RDNA 4m “GFX 11.7” graphics… ⌘ Read more

Open-Source Etnaviv Driver Now Able To Run YOLOX
The open-source, reverse-engineered Etnaviv driver stack that began for providing accelerated graphics support on Vivante GPU IP and since expanded to handle Vivante NPUs as well is now able to handle YOLOX object detection… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.3 Lands Improvements For Voodoo 3 / 4 / 5 & Vintage Atari Computers In 2026
At a time when Linux continues dropping older hardware drivers due to the influx of AI/LLM-generated bug reports and patches for hardware extremely unlikely to be used with modern versions of the mainline Linux kernel, Voodoo graphics cards and vintage Atari computers are seeing some reprieve with the upcoming Linux 7.3 kernel release… ⌘ Read more

Linus Torvalds Endures A Debug Session From Hell, ‘Enormously Helped’ By AI
Linus Torvalds says AI “enormously helped” him track down a stubborn Intel Xe graphics driver bug that took 24 debugging patches and 18 kernel boots to isolate. “I’d like to call it my tireless helper, but the AI several times stated flat out that this was impossible and unsolvable and that we should just write a report about it, … ⌘ Read more

Intel Compute Runtime 26.31.39395.13 Continues Prepping For Crescent Island, OpenCL LEO
Intel today released the Compute Runtime 26.31.39395.13 open-source GPU compute stack update for Windows and Linux systems. Big ongoing trends for the Intel Compute Runtime continue to be preparing for upcoming Crescent Island and Nova Lake Xe3P graphics hardware as well as building out their new OpenCL LEO driver… ⌘ Read more

Linus Torvalds Endures A Debug Session From Hell, “Enormously Helped” By AI
It’s pretty rare to see Linus Torvalds author patches himself pertaining to the open-source Linux graphics drivers, but waking up this morning I was surprised to see he authored and committed an Intel Xe kernel graphics driver change himself. It ended up being after he encountered a “debug session from hell” but was ultimately helped by AI in fixing a bug that had been irking him… ⌘ Read more

Intel Mesa Linux Drivers Now Treating Nova Lake S / U / H / HX As Stable
Intel’s open-source Mesa drivers for Iris Gallium3D (OpenGL) and ANV (Vulkan) on Linux are no longer treating next-gen Nova Lake processors with integrated graphics as experimental and off-by-default. With today’s Mesa 26.3-devel code, the Intel driver code across Nova Lake’s S, U, H, and HX product families are considered stable and enabled by default… ⌘ Read more

Intel Enables Buffer Compression For Better Gaming Performance With DXVK
Merged today to Mesa 26.3-devel is a nice performance boost for Intel graphics with Valve’s Steam Play when using DXVK for Direct3D 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 over the Vulkan API. The open-source Intel ANV driver is seeing up to 5% better performance with DXVK… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.3 To Land Initial Code Improving vRAM Management, More Improvements Coming
Earlier this year Natalie Vock of Valve’s Linux graphics team laid out some patches for improving the Linux gaming experience for systems with limited vRAM. The kernel work for improving that video memory management is set to be introduced in the Linux 7.3 kernel. While that’s a celebration on its own, Vock is pursuing more improvements still for bettering the Linux GPU driver video memory management behavior… ⌘ Read more

New Linux Driver Enables 12VHPWR Monitoring For ASUS ROG Astral Graphics Cards
For those concerned about current imbalance or voltage changes with the 12VHPWR power connectors and having an ASUS ROG Astral graphics card, there is now an open-source driver for Linux available that integrates with the hardware monitoring (HWMON) subsystem for 12VHPWR reporting on these ASUS graphics cards… ⌘ Read more

Marek Olšák’s 19 Latest Patches Further Optimizing RADV & ACO
Legendary Mesa Radeon Gallium3D driver developer Marek Olšák who was a longtime AMD employee and then joined Valve’s Linux graphics driver team earlier this year has continued his focus now on perfecting his art around the RADV Vulkan driver and ACO shader compiler… ⌘ Read more

Intel’s Jay Graphics Shader Compiler Now Passing Vulkan CTS With Xe2/Xe3 Hardware
Last year Alyssa Rosenzweig joined Intel to work on their Linux graphics drivers after previously serving as a contractor for Valve on their graphics stack and also previously leading the Mesa driver work for the Asahi Linux Apple Silicon graphics support. Since joining Intel, she has been leading the development of Jay as a new SSA-based shader compiler for Intel graphics hardware to be used by the Mesa Iris Gallium3D and ANV … ⌘ Read more

Intel XPU Manager 2.1 Released For Monitoring Arc Pro Graphics On Windows/Linux
Intel XPU Manager 2.1 is now available as the latest version of this open-source tool for Linux and Windows systems for the monitoring and management of Arc Pro graphics cards. The Intel XPU Manager helps in keeping an eye on device utilization and other metrics via the xpu-smi command and other components… ⌘ Read more

Linux Finally Seeing Patches For Better Hybrid Graphics On 2018~2019 Era MacBook Pros
Patches posted today to the Linux kernel mailing list provide support for Apple GMUX hybrid graphics support on 2018~2019 Apple MacBook Pros. This allows for better power savings on these nearly decade old MacBook Pro laptops by allowing the discrete GPU to power down and be properly restored as needed… ⌘ Read more

Intel ANV Driver Enables Vulkan Video AV1 Encoding For DG2/Alchemist GPUs
Hyunjun Ko of Igalia continues working on Vulkan Video support for Intel graphics hardware on Linux with the ANV driver. Merged now for Mesa 26.3-devel is enabling AV1 video encoding via Vulkan Video on DG2/Alchemist hardware… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.2 To Revert Back To The FIFO DRM Scheduler Policy Due To “Fair” Regressions
One of the Direct Rendering Manager changes made for Linux 7.2 was switching to “fair” as the DRM scheduler default in place of the existing FIFO policy. The intent was on making the DRM scheduler policy more fair with this being used by AMDGPU and various other DRM kernel graphics drivers. But due to a last minute regression report, the fair policy is being reverted for Linux 7.2… ⌘ Read more

Intel LLM-Scaler Ready With Muse Glimmer Support, Other LLMs & Features
Intel’s LLM-Scaler project that was born out of their Project Battlematrix initiative aims to make it easier to run generative AI on Arc (Pro) B-Series graphics cards with the likes of vLLM, ComfyUI, SGLang, and other popular AI software in this Docker-based pre-configured AI stack. This week new LLM-Scaler releases brought same-day support for new models and other enhancements… ⌘ Read more

LACT 0.10 Released With New NVIDIA Overclocking Controls, Blackwell Hotspot Sensor
LACT is one of the popular third-party Linux GPU configuration and monitoring utilities that works across NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel graphics. This GUI provides GPU overclocking controls plus a wealth of information reporting, which is especially great considering the lack of any official GUI control panel for AMD Radeon and Intel Arc graphics on Linux. With today’s LACT 0.10 release, there are yet more features in tow… ⌘ Read more

Old SGI Drivers Being Removed In Linux 7.3 Over Security Concerns
On top of various other Linux drivers for old hardware being removed due to noise generated by AI/LLM coding agents, there are more examples coming with Linux 7.3 as some old Silicon Graphics (SGI) drivers are being removed from the mainline Linux kernel over security concerns… ⌘ Read more

Mesa 26.3 Intel Driver Code Enables Large GRF Mode For Newer GPUs
The Intel graphics compiler code in Mesa 26.3-devel has now enabled the Large GRF mode for Alchemist/DG2 and Battlemage/Xe2 graphics and VRT for Xe3 graphics… ⌘ Read more