The Mesa 25.2 open-source graphics stack has been officially released, bringing a host of enhancements for various graphics drivers, including NVK, PanVK, Panfrost, ANV, RADV, RadeonSI, R600, Zink, LLVMpipe, and Freedreno, along with improved support for numerous video games.
One of the key features of this update is a significant cleanup of the window system code. This includes the complete removal of deprecated support functionality, such as DRI2 and insecure legacy GEM names, as well as discontinuing the use of thread-unsafe libX11. Additionally, the Clover OpenCL implementation has been removed in favor of the new Rust-based RustiCL implementation. The NVK Vulkan driver for NVIDIA GPUs, which is linked with these updates, is expected to improve shader compile times by about 12% due to added dependencies.
The NVK driver now includes support for NVIDIA Blackwell and Kepler architectures and several Vulkan extensions, including VK_EXT_zero_initialize_device_memory and VK_KHR_cooperative_matrix.
Mesa 25.2 also introduces significant performance upgrades to the Apple Vulkan driver, HoneyKrisp, alongside adding full support for Vulkan 1.4 and various multi-draw pipeline enhancements to the PanVK Vulkan driver, which is designed for ARM Mali GPUs. New Vulkan extensions have been incorporated for PanVK, expanding its capabilities in rendering complex graphics.
The RADV Radeon Vulkan driver has received support for a range of new extensions such as VK_KHR_robustness2 and Vulkan video support on GFX12 architectures, while the RadeonSI OpenCL graphics driver boasts enhanced SVM support and kernel features.
In addition, numerous video games are better supported under Mesa 25.2, with improved performance for titles such as Ghost of Tsushima, DOTA 2, The Last of Us Part II Remastered, and more.
Moreover, the driver has also extended compatibility with various OpenGL and Vulkan extensions across different GPUs, ensuring that users experience the best performance and features.
For more details about the improvements, you can refer to the full release notes or download the Mesa 25.2 source from the official website.