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Graphics: KMS, GPUs, and Drivers
Simon Ser ☛ Simon Ser: Status update, December 2025
Hi all!
This month the new KMS plane color pipeline API has finally been merged! It took multiple years and continued work and review by engineers from multiple organizations, but at last we managed to push it over the finish line. This new API exposes to user-space new hardware blocks: these applying color transformations before blending multiple KMS planes as a final composited image to be sent on the wire. This API unlocks power-efficient and low-latency color management features such as HDR.
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[Old] NVIDIA Corporation ☛ NVIDIA Transitions Fully Towards Open-Source GPU Kernel Modules
With the R515 driver, NVIDIA released a set of Linux GPU kernel modules in May 2022 as open source with dual GPL and MIT licensing. The initial release targeted datacenter compute GPUs, with GeForce and Workstation GPUs in an alpha state.
At the time, we announced that more robust and fully-featured GeForce and Workstation Linux support would follow in subsequent releases and the NVIDIA Open Kernel Modules would eventually supplant the closed-source driver.
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Timur Kristóf: Understanding your Linux open source drivers
After introducing how graphics drivers work in general, I’d like to give a brief overview about what is what in the Linux graphics stack, what are the important parts and what the key projects are where the development happens, as well as what you need to do to get the best user experience out of it.