Luis Chamberlain sent out the modules changes today for the Linux 6.6 merge window. Most notable with the modules update is a change that better builds up the defenses against NVIDIA’s proprietary kernel driver from using GPL-only symbols. Or in other words, bits that only true open-source drivers should be utilizing and not proprietary kernel drivers like NVIDIA’s default Linux driver in respecting the original kernel code author’s intent.
Back in 2020 when the original defense was added, NVIDIA recommended avoiding the Linux 5.9 for the time being. They ended up having a supported driver several weeks later. It will be interesting to see this time how long Linux 6.6+ thwarts their kernel driver.
There’s been some oddball nasty issues with Mesa recently. SteamVR causing the driver to crash (and the display just won’t come back :/) H265 encoding causing driver crashing, just weird stuff. Simple things like Wayland work great, but if you have even a slightly unique workload you may run into major issues
I’ve had lost of issues with SteamVR too but not with anything else. I suspect those issues are actually SteamVR’s fault tho because it’s pretty buggy on Linux in general.
Nah, straight up driver crashes are on Mesa’s side, not SteamVR’s. No userland software should be able to permanently bring down your driver.