--- title: Cracking Windows Open: Porting RADV to WIN32 | daily.dev description: RADV, Mesa's open source Vulkan driver for AMD GPUs, is being ported to Windows. Building on Faith Ekstrand's XDC 2024 feasibility work, Collabora (sponsored... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/cracking-windows-open-porting-radv-to-win32-f2n59xdec twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Cracking Windows Open: Porting RADV to WIN32 | daily.dev og:description: RADV, Mesa's open source Vulkan driver for AMD GPUs, is being ported to Windows. Building on Faith Ekstrand's XDC 2024 feasibility work, Collabora (sponsored... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/cracking-windows-open-porting-radv-to-win32-f2n59xdec og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/F2n59xdeC.png og:image:alt: Cracking Windows Open: Porting RADV to WIN32 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Cracking Windows Open: Porting RADV to WIN32 **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 6 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary RADV, Mesa's open source Vulkan driver for AMD GPUs, is being ported to Windows. Building on Faith Ekstrand's XDC 2024 feasibility work, Collabora (sponsored by Valve) has improved command stream handling, synchronization, and hardware support, and successfully ran Counter-Strike 2 using the driver. Key challenges include reverse-engineering AMD's private WDDM2 kernel driver interface, MSVC compiler incompatibilities with Mesa's codebase, and generation-specific GPU architecture differences. The port remains experimental and non-conformant. The biggest blocker to production readiness is the fragile reliance on reverse-engineered private data structures between the user-mode and kernel-mode drivers — requiring either AMD to document the interface, open-source the KMD, or provide a stable ABI. Presentation performance also needs work, with DXGI swapchain support and zero-copy swaps as future goals. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 2 discussions and 38 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-07-29). **TL;DR:** The community is mostly engaged with the technical and political challenges of the project — particularly the anti-cheat/driver-signing hurdle for any open-source Windows KMD — with some skepticism about feasibility and a few tangential discussions about porting Linux drivers to older Windows versions. **Sentiment:** 30% positive · 40% mixed · 30% skeptical **The case for** - Open-source Windows GPU drivers would be broadly beneficial beyond just gaming use cases. - The shared Linux/Windows codebase roots of AMDGPU make this kind of port more feasible than it might otherwise be. **The pushback** - Developing a custom KMD is practically blocked by anti-cheat software whitelisting requirements, which favor large OEMs. - Getting a kernel-mode driver signed on modern Windows is reportedly a significant pain. - Porting Linux kernel drivers to other platforms is generally very hard due to tight Linux-specific abstractions. - A compatibility matrix for supported GPUs and current Vulkan feature limitations is missing, making it hard for developers to evaluate the project. **By community** - hackernews (mixed): Discussion is largely sidetracked onto the feasibility of an open-source Windows KMD and anti-cheat obstacles, with mixed optimism and skepticism about the broader project. **Hottest debate:** Whether developing a fully open-source Windows kernel-mode GPU driver is practically viable given anti-cheat software whitelisting and driver-signing requirements. **Open questions** - Would AMD ever document the private WDDM2 KMD interface or open-source the KMD to unblock production readiness? - Is it feasible to provide a shim bridging Linux and Windows internal kernel APIs given that Linux is a moving target? - What GPUs, Vulkan features, and limitations are currently supported by the experimental port? **Highlights** > You can't really develop a kernel-mode driver nowadays without being an incredibly large OEM. Otherwise, you won't be accepted by any anti-cheat. > — [LoganDark on hackernews · 4 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49094339) > So we should throw away the possibility entirely just because of a few videogames? That doesn't sound reasonable at all, considering most videogames don't have anti cheats and GPUs can be used for way more stuff than playing. > — [Almondsetat on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49095031) > I am quite sure AMD is already using a fork of the Linux amdgpu KMD for their proprietary driver on Windows (which in part explains why a project like this can even be done) Porting Linux drivers to anywhere is generally hard. It either makes your kernel very Linux-like (and lots of manpower to translate the abstractions), or forces you to put Linux on it. There are bazillions of projects to put recent Intel drivers on 9x and none suceeded, for example. Plus my recent observation that for Haiku it was easier to port the out-of-tree nvidia driver and fork Mesa, than it was to port the Linux amdgpu one. > — [AshamedCaptain on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49095662) > A compatibility matrix showing supported GPUs, Vulkan features, and current limitations would help developers evaluate the project. > — [madhu\_ghalame on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49095015) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49085070) · 5 points · 0 comments - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49093435) · 56 points · 38 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Valve Sponsors Work Bringing Open-Source RADV Driver To Windows](https://daily.dev/posts/valve-sponsors-work-bringing-open-source-radv-driver-to-windows-gzfbnkbgy) · Phoronix · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [As Linux gaming gains ground, Valve brings Mesa's powerhouse AMD driver to Windows](https://daily.dev/posts/as-linux-gaming-gains-ground-valve-brings-mesa-s-powerhouse-amd-driver-to-windows-awqprivpk) · XDA Developers · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [The State Of The AMD RADV Vulkan Driver In Late 2025](https://daily.dev/posts/the-state-of-the-amd-radv-vulkan-driver-in-late-2025-b8khzwb4r) · Phoronix · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#vulkan](https://daily.dev/tags/vulkan), [#reverse-engineering](https://daily.dev/tags/reverse-engineering), [#mesa](https://daily.dev/tags/mesa) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/cracking-windows-open-porting-radv-to-win32-f2n59xdec) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Cracking Windows Open: Porting RADV to WIN32","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/cracking-windows-open-porting-radv-to-win32-f2n59xdec","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/cracking-windows-open-porting-radv-to-win32-f2n59xdec"},"datePublished":"2026-07-29T09:17:02.211Z","dateModified":"2026-07-29T12:07:23.285Z","description":"RADV, Mesa's open source Vulkan driver for AMD GPUs, is being ported to Windows. 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