2025 looks like a big year for Linux graphics drivers. We recently got to know that the Rust-based Nova NVIDIA GPU driver could make it into the upcoming Linux kernel 6.15 release, and the proprietary driver by NVIDIA made some notable gains in terms of new features and improvements.
And now it seems it is Mesa's time to shine, as they have revealed an exciting change.
What's Happening: In an announcement blog by Faith Ekstrand of Collabora, a well-known Mesa developer, it has been announced that the old Nouveau OpenGL driver won't be used by default on Nouveau systems anymore for NVIDIA Turing and later GPUs, with a new Zink+NVK implementation taking its place.
For clarifying things, Mesa is the open source graphics stack that is found on most Linux distributions that provides OpenGL and Vulkan implementations for rendering 3D graphics on Linux.
Zink, on the other hand, is also an OpenGL implementation, but one that's built on top of Vulkan as a Mesa Gallium driver that integrates well with Mesa's existing OpenGL implementation.
In contrast, NVK is an open source Vulkan driver for NVIDIA GPUs that currently supports Turing and later GPUs, developed as part of the Mesa 3D graphics library. As for the outgoing Nouveau OpenGL driver, it is a relic of the past that has many limitations, including poor performance, incomplete hardware support, and stability issues.
What to Expect: Slightly better performance for one, with Zink having matured since its initial launch back in 2018. The Mesa developers are confident that this configuration will be a much better choice than the outgoing Nouveau OpenGL driver.
Faith also added the following:
Often, it takes some time before the switch over to a compatibility layer is complete. The old drivers are battle-tested and the fear is always that the compatibility layer may introduce performance regressions or application issues.
Nouveau is the first Mesa driver stack to make this change so we've been finding and fixing a lot of issues ahead of the rest of Mesa. Part of what makes Nouveau a good trailblazer here is that the old Nouveau GL driver is actually pretty bad, so "Don't be worse than the hardware driver" isn't as high a bar for us as for other drivers. NVK, on the other hand, is proving to be pretty solid and Zink+NVK seems to be working well.
It is wonderful to see developers pushing for modern solutions to old problems. Such initiatives only improve the appeal of Linux as a platform, attracting more users into this open ecosystem, away from walled gardens.
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