Kernel News and Graphics Coverage

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Apr 10, 2026,
updated Apr 14, 2026

• Kernel Space

  • University of Toronto ☛ Some quick notes to myself on nftables 'symbolic variables'

    Nftables is the current generation Linux firewall rule system, supplanting iptables (which supplanted ipchains). As covered in the nft manual page, nftables has the concept of 'symbolic variables'. Since I'm used to BSD PF, I will crudely describe these as a combination of some parts of pf tables and PF macros. I personally feel that the nft manual page doesn't do a good job of documenting what's possible in these, so here are some notes.

• Graphics Stack

  • FSR 4 Upscaler Works on RDNA 3 in Linux-Based Games

    Users were able to launch successfully upscaler FSR4 from the company AMD on Linux operating systems. For this, the authors used a translator Wine version 11 and a special utility OptiScaler, which allows you to replace the original scaling files in modern games.

  • Collabora ☛ Wayland 1.25 Documentation Update

    Wayland 1.25 refreshes its documentation with three new chapters covering Wayland XML specification, content model updates, and color management design.

  • Natalie Vock: Fixing AMDGPU’s VRAM management for low-end GPUs

    It may sound unbelievable to some, but not everyone has a datacenter beast with 128GB of VRAM shoved in their desktop PCs.

Adding More:

• A Valve engineer's Linux patch makes 8GB AMD GPUs better at gaming | PCWorld

  Is 8GB of VRAM enough for modern PC gaming? That’s the question a lot of people have been asking lately as prices for graphics cards climb higher, and doubly so since the Steam Machine was announced with a custom AMD GPU with “just” 8GB. A Valve engineer seems to have been working on the problem, and a new kernel patch for AMD graphics cards could deliver greater performance on Linux.

  The engineer in question is Natalie Vock, who says she’s an independent contractor for Valve. On her personal blog, she outlines the patch and explains the issue of different programs fighting for limited VRAM resources, straining the video memory on cards with 8GB or less.

• An Open Source Dev Has Put Together a Fix for AMD GPU's VRAM Mismanagement on Linux

  Natalie Vock (pixelcluster), a developer who works on low-level Linux code and as an independent contractor for Valve, has published a fix for a VRAM management problem that has been making life difficult for Linux gamers on AMD GPUs with 8GB of VRAM or less.

  She has put together a combination of kernel patches and userspace utilities that stop background apps from stealing VRAM away from whatever game you're playing.

  The underlying issue is that when VRAM runs out, the kernel driver has no way to tell which memory matters more. A game and a browser tab look identical from the driver's perspective, so when something has to give, game memory often takes the hit.