Mesa is an open source, developed graphics library that provides a generic implementation of OpenGL.
The release of the new version of Mesa 23.1.0, this being the first version of the Mesa 23.1.0 branch to have a experimental state and which after the final stabilization of the code, a stable version 23.1.1 will be released.
In Mesa 23.1, Vulkan 1.3 graphics API support is available in anv for Intel GPUs, radv for AMD GPUs, Qualcomm GPUs, and in emulator (vn) mode. Support for Vulkan 1.1 is implemented in the lavapipe software rasterizer (lvp) and Vulkan 1.0 in the v3dv driver (Raspberry Pi 4 Broadcom VideoCore VI GPU).
Table 23.1.0 main novelties
In this new version of Mesa 23.1.0 that is presented, it is highlighted that added AMD GPU support to Rusticl driver with an implementation of the OpenCL 3.0 specification written in Rust, besides the controllers Vulkan ANV (Intel) and RADV (AMD) have implemented initial support for the Vulkan Video extension, which defines capabilities for hardware-accelerated video decoding.
Another of the changes that stands out in this new version is that the support for AMD GPUs based on RDNA3/GFX11 architecture (Radeon RX 7900 series) on the RadeonSI OpenGL driver and the RADV Vulkan driver. Added initial support for AMD GFX940 (AMD Instinct MI300) GPUs.
In addition to that, he RADV Vulkan (AMD) driver implements extension support Graphics Pipeline Library (LPG), which compiles four different parts of the graphics pipelines to speed up the loading of pipelines in applications that reuse the same shaders.
Added support for structures extendedDynamicState3ColorBlendEquation, nativeUnderestimation (for GFX9+ GPUs) Y fullCoveredFragmentShaderInputVariable (for GFX9+ GPUs) for the RADV Vulkan (AMD ) driver, as well as adding support for OpenGL extension GL_NV_alpha_to_coverage_dither_control to r600 controller for evergreen and the new families of AMD GPUs.
Furthermore, the RADV (AMD) Vulkan driver for GFX11 GPUs now supports the Radeon GPU Profiler (RGP) profiling tool, while the RADV Vulkan driver includes optimizations prepared by Valve to improve gaming performance on Steam Deck.
Of the other changes that stand out in this new version of Mesa 23.1.0:
- The RADV Vulkan driver supports a compact disk cache that resides in a single file and can reduce the overall cache size by 60%.
- Changes have been made to improve EGL compatibility in the Haiku OS environment.
- The asahi OpenGL driver for the Apple AGX GPU used in the Apple M1 and M2 chips implements the ability to cache shaders to disk.
- Improved support for Intel DG2-G12 (Arc Alchemist) discrete graphics cards and Meteor Lake GPUs in the ANV Vulkan driver (Intel) and the Iris OpenGL driver.
- Added initial support for LoongArch CPUs.
Finally if you are interested in knowing more about it about this new version of the Mesa drivers, you can check the details in the following link.
How to install Mesa video drivers on Linux?
Mesa packages found in all Linux distributions, so its installation can be done either by downloading and compiling the source code (All information about it here) or in a relatively simple way, which depends on the availability within the official channels of your distribution or third parties.
For those who are users of Ubuntu, Linux Mint and derivatives they can add the following repository where the drivers are updated quickly.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kisak/kisak-mesa -y
Now we are going to update our list of packages and repositories with:
sudo apt update
And finally we can install the drivers with:
sudo apt upgrade
For the case of those who are Arch Linux users and derivatives, we install them with the following command:
sudo pacman -S mesa mesa-demos mesa-libgl lib32-mesa lib32-mesa-libgl
For whoever they are Fedora 32 users can use this repository, so they must enable corp with:
sudo dnf copr enable grigorig/mesa-stable sudo dnf update
Finally, for those who are openSUSE users, they can install or upgrade by typing:
sudo zypper in mesa