GamingOnLinux Article RSS For: Vulkan

D7VK version 1.2 brings more Direct3D 6 improvements and a little Direct3D 5 too

Liam Dawe — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 12:51:35 +0000

Entering the land of what the developer calls diminishing returns, D7VK version 1.2 has rolled out delivering a bunch of Direct3D 6 improvements.

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Mesa RADV driver on Linux looks set for a big ray tracing performance boost

Liam Dawe — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 15:49:58 +0000

One thing currently a bit lacking on Linux is the performance of ray tracing with the open source Mesa RADV driver, but a big improvement is coming.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

D7VK v1.1 is out with experimental Direct3D 6 support via Vulkan for Windows games on Linux

Liam Dawe — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 15:24:19 +0000

The D7VK project for providing Direct3D 7 support on Linux with Wine / Proton has expanded in the version 1.1 release to add experimental Direct3D 6 support.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

D7VK brings Direct3D 7 to Linux using Vulkan based on DXVK

Liam Dawe — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 15:17:47 +0000

We've have DXVK and VKD3D-Proton for various versions of Direct3D on Linux, but now it seems we're also getting Direct3D 7 as well.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

The Elder Scrolls: Arena game engine remake OpenTESArena adds Vulkan support

Liam Dawe — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 10:48:28 +0000

While OpenTESArena is still a work in progress to bring The Elder Scrolls: Arena up to modern standards, it's looking even better with the 0.17.0 update.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

NVIDIA are working on a "general optimization" for VKD3D / DirectX12 games on Linux

Liam Dawe — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 11:51:19 +0000

For a while now Linux users with NVIDIA GPUs have been reporting performance issues with DirectX12 titles using VKD3D, but a fix may finally be coming.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Stress-testing app OCCT switches to Vulkan by default dropping DirectX

Liam Dawe — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 09:09:20 +0000

The popular stress-testing app OCCT recently landed on Steam, and the first major update here swaps DirectX for Vulkan by default.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Direct3D to Vulkan layer DXVK v2.7 released with performance improvements and Intel support upgrades

Liam Dawe — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 08:50:00 +0000

DXVK v2.7 was released over the weekend with lots of improvements for the Direct3D to Vulkan layer. Here's what's new and improved.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

A Hat in Time gets a surprise update with DirectX 12 and Vulkan support

Liam Dawe — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 08:57:53 +0000

The much loved 3D platformer A Hat in Time just got a surprise patch to update the game for newer graphics APIs.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Vulkan API developers try to address some developer frustrations with a new extension

Liam Dawe — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 15:12:35 +0000

Vulkan has been out for around 9 years now, and The Khronos Group continue tweaking it for developers to remove frustrations.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Direct3D to Vulkan layer DXVK v2.6.2 released

Liam Dawe — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 15:08:41 +0000

The latest release of the Direct3D to Vulkan translation layer has been released, with version 2.6.2 bringing assorted improvements.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Khronos Group announce the Vulkan Video Decode VP9 Extension

Liam Dawe — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 14:58:01 +0000

Another expansion of the Vulkan graphics API has arrived with the Vulkan Video Decode VP9 Extension.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Mesa 25.0.7 open source Linux graphics drivers released

Liam Dawe — Thu, 29 May 2025 16:58:26 +0000

Developer Eric Engestrom announced the Mesa 25.0.7 release, finishing off the 25.0 series of open source Linux graphics drivers.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Mesa NVK (NVIDIA Vulkan driver) now Vulkan 1.4 conformant on Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta GPUs

Liam Dawe — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 09:46:31 +0000

Collabora developer Faith Ekstrand has announced a nice big milestone for the open source Mesa driver NVK, the NVIDIA Vulkan driver, as it has expanded Vulkan 1.4 conformance to now include Maxwell+ (Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta GPUs).

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Historical strategy game Old World switches to Vulkan for Linux / Steam Deck

Liam Dawe — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 09:12:21 +0000

Mohawk Games continue releasing some pretty big updates to their Civilization like game Old World, with the latest aiming to fix up lots of issues and improve performance.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

DXVK 2.6 brings expanded Nvidia Reflex support and lots of game fixes for Linux / Steam Deck

Liam Dawe — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 17:58:16 +0000

DXVK is a tool used by Proton that translates Direct3D 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 to Vulkan. It's one of the projects that enables Windows games to run so well on Linux platforms like Steam Deck. Version 2.6 was just released.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Mesa 25.1 will default to Zink+NVK instead of the old Nouveau OpenGL driver for NVIDIA on Linux

Liam Dawe — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 16:03:46 +0000

Time for a bit of modernisation. With the upcoming Mesa 25.1 release, Collabora developer Faith Ekstrand announced a big change for NVIDIA GPU users. If you're not using the proprietary NVIDIA driver, that is.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Open source RTS 0 A.D. Alpha 27 released bringing a new Vulkan renderer, new maps, AMD FSR and lots more

Liam Dawe — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 12:41:06 +0000

The free, open source and cross-platform RTS 0 A.D. Alpha 27 is now finally available and it brings with it a whole lot of new features and content.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Vulkan Quake port vkQuake 1.32 adds external WAD, WAD3, and Half-life format support

Liam Dawe — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 19:02:44 +0000

vkQuake is an advanced port of id Software's Quake using Vulkan instead of OpenGL for rendering. It's impressive, one of the best ways to play, and the recent update sounds pretty delightful.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

DXVK v2.5.3 released with more improvements for Windows games on Linux

Liam Dawe — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 16:13:59 +0000

Developer Philip Rebohle has released DXVK version 2.5.3 bringing more improvements for this tool that translates Direct3D 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 to Vulkan.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Direct3D to Vulkan translation layer DXVK v2.5.2 brings fixes for Alpha Protocol, The Sims 2, Borderlands 2 and more

Liam Dawe — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 21:20:22 +0000

Another bug fixes release is out for DXVK (v2.5.2), the project that translates Direct3D 8, 9, 10 and 11 to Vulkan. It's a big part of what makes Proton able to run Windows games on Steam Deck / Linux so nicely.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Direct3D 12 to Vulkan project VKD3D-Proton v2.14 out now with various performance improvements

Liam Dawe — Fri, 13 Dec 2024 14:49:26 +0000

VKD3D-Proton v2.14 is now available bringing various improvements to the Direct3D 12 to Vulkan layer that's used by Valve's Proton for running Windows games on Linux.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Vulkan API 1.4 released with new required extensions, better 8K rendering

Liam Dawe — Mon, 02 Dec 2024 18:32:27 +0000

The Khronos Group have today announced the release of the Vulkan 1.4 API specification, with various changes and improvements for game and application developers.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

AMD releases FidelityFX SDK 1.1.0 with FSR 3.1 and Vulkan support

Liam Dawe — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 11:46:24 +0000

Good news for developers and open source, as AMD have now finally put up a new release of the FidelityFX SDK which now has FidelityFX FSR 3.1.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

VKD3D-Proton v2.13 has updates for OpenVR / OpenXR, performance improvements + more

Liam Dawe — Fri, 21 Jun 2024 15:51:44 +0000

Hans-Kristian Arntzen today announced the released of VKD3D-Proton version 2.13, the Direct3D 12 API on top of Vulkan translator for Proton.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Honeykrisp is a new conformant Linux Vulkan driver for Apple M1

Liam Dawe — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 13:14:32 +0000

Apple M1 support on Linux is about to take another leap forwards, with the introduction of the open source Honeykrisp Vulkan driver.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

NVK driver gets DRM Format Modifiers to work with Gamescope in Mesa 24.1

Liam Dawe — Thu, 16 May 2024 18:35:25 +0000

Just recently NVK, the open source Nvidia Vulkan driver, merged in a new Vulkan extension that is rather important and means it will work properly with Gamescope.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Zink driver startup time squashed with new patches

Liam Dawe — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 10:04:20 +0000

Developer Mike Blumenkrantz is once again blogging about working on the Zink driver, and this time a nice optimization is on the way for startup times.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Open source NVIDIA Vulkan driver NVK gets more enhancements

Liam Dawe — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 09:18:53 +0000

Developer Faith Ekstrand has written up a fresh blog post on Collabora which goes over implementing two extensions in NVK, the open source NVIDIA Vulkan driver, and how it ended up fixing actual games.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Team Fortress 2 64bit support released, plus Vulkan for Linux via DXVK

Liam Dawe — Fri, 19 Apr 2024 08:55:44 +0000

Valve has now launched the 64bit update for Team Fortress 2, which should bring performance improvements for most users. Plus we get Vulkan now too.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Half-Life remake Black Mesa has a big upgrade with DXVK 2.3.1, optimizations and bug fixes

Liam Dawe — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 08:42:42 +0000

Crowbar Collective have released the Necro Patch for the Half-Life remake Black Mesa, which brings with it some essential bug fixes and some nice optimizations.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

DXVK version 2.3.1 released with more efficient shader code generation on NVIDIA GPUs

Liam Dawe — Wed, 20 Mar 2024 16:29:41 +0000

The Vulkan-based translation layer for Direct3D 9/10/11 used for Wine and Proton has a new release out, and it sounds like a good one if you're an NVIDIA GPU user on Linux.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Wine Direct3D 12 to Vulkan translation library vkd3d v1.11 released

Liam Dawe — Wed, 06 Mar 2024 15:37:12 +0000

While Valve continue pushing forward for gamers with VKD3D-Proton, the Wine team continue building up their own separate Direct3D 12 to Vulkan translation library with a new release out now.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Wine pulls in code to eliminate a Vulkan performance issue for wow64

Liam Dawe — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 12:53:42 +0000

Wine is about to get just that little bit sweeter, with new code recently merged into the project that should work around a performance issue with Vulkan.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Open-source Vulkan driver for NVIDIA hardware in Mesa, NVK, is now ready for prime time

Liam Dawe — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 12:19:41 +0000

The future of NVIDIA hardware on Linux is here with the open source Vulkan driver NVK in Mesa, as there's now a Merge Request to have it shipped by default.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

NVIDIA open source driver to use NVK + Zink for OpenGL on newer GPUs

nwildner — Fri, 23 Feb 2024 14:55:45 +0000

A recent merge request on the Mesa Git repository added the initial support for allowing drivers to chose Zink as the translation layer for handling OpenGL.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Cross-platform development library SDL3 gets a Vulkan Renderer and camera API

Liam Dawe — Fri, 23 Feb 2024 13:24:41 +0000

With development work ongoing for SDL3, some recent exciting improvements include a Vulkan Render backend and a camera API.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

World War Z disables Vulkan on Steam Deck (but you can get it back)

Liam Dawe — Tue, 06 Feb 2024 12:20:19 +0000

Saber Interactive have updated the co-op zombie shooter World War Z, and now they've disabled being able to pick the Vulkan API on Steam Deck.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Mesa 24.0 out now with AMD RADV ray-tracing improvements, more NVIDIA NVK improvements

Liam Dawe — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 10:08:52 +0000

Eric Engestrom announced the latest open source graphics drivers release with Mesa 24.0 bringing with it a great many improvements and new drivers.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Team Fortress 2 has a 64bit and Vulkan update for Linux in testing

Liam Dawe — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 12:28:24 +0000

Valve are still updating Team Fortress 2 (TF2), and a bigger technical update is currently in the works that will bring 64bit and Vulkan support to the Linux version.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

GPU Reshape is a fancy new open source tool for developers

Liam Dawe — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 16:30:32 +0000

A fresh announcement for developers today is GPU Reshape, a free and open source tool that could be really useful for game developers working with Vulkan and DirectX 12 to deal with potentially undefined behaviour.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Vulkan API update brings Video Extensions for Accelerated H.264 and H.265 Encode

Liam Dawe — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 13:52:46 +0000

The Khronos Group have announced the release of the Vulkan 1.3.274 API, which brings with it the finalized extensions for encoding and decoding of video streams using a variety of video coding standards.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Intel Vulkan drivers on Linux should run more games with Mesa 24.0

Liam Dawe — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 11:46:36 +0000

While work is ongoing to provide brand new Intel Xe Vulkan drivers on Linux with their newer driver, work is still happening to improve the current driver.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Open source NVIDIA Vulkan driver NVK hits Vulkan 1.0 conformance

Liam Dawe — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 11:08:42 +0000

A big step for the in-development open source NVIDIA Vulkan driver NVK, as Collabora have announced how it's hit Vulkan 1.0 conformance.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Squadron 42 finally 'feature complete', CIG talk up Vulkan support for Star Citizen

Liam Dawe — Thu, 26 Oct 2023 12:22:21 +0000

It's been a long road getting here but it seems we're inching closer to Cloud Imperium Games actually releasing Squadron 42, their cinematic single-player space adventure set in the Star Citizen universe. They also talked up Vulkan support with their ongoing tech work.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Blender enables Vulkan as an experimental option

Liam Dawe — Fri, 20 Oct 2023 13:10:45 +0000

Some fun news for Blender fans, as their work to bring up Vulkan support in the project has hit a big new milestone with support now enabled but it's still experimental for now.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Mesa getting Vulkan performance upgrades for submission merging

Liam Dawe — Sun, 24 Sep 2023 13:24:42 +0000

Developer Mike Blumenkrantz, who is one of many under contract by Valve, has released another blog post highlighting another fun optimization from their ongoing Mesa driver work.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Nintendo 3DS emulator Citra adds Vulkan support

Liam Dawe — Mon, 18 Sep 2023 12:58:10 +0000

Nintendo 3DS emulation is about to get a whole lot better, as Citra now has Vulkan support bringing better performance for players.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

VKDoom is a ZDoom-based source port with a focus on Vulkan

Liam Dawe — Wed, 13 Sep 2023 18:21:00 +0000

Well this is pretty fun to see! The ZDoom / GZDoom family is expanding with VKDoom, a new source-port that has a focus on expanded Vulkan support and modern rendering.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

VKD3D-Proton v2.10 brings various game fixes, DirectStorage additions and lots more

Liam Dawe — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 14:27:59 +0000

VKD3D-Proton, the tool that translates Direct3D 12 to Vulkan for Steam Play Proton, has a brand new release out with version 2.10 and it's an exciting one.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.