--- title: Valve Sponsors Work Bringing Open-Source RADV Driver To... description: Valve is sponsoring Collabora engineers to port the open-source Mesa RADV Vulkan driver to Microsoft Windows. The work involves integrating with Windows WDDM2... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/valve-sponsors-work-bringing-open-source-radv-driver-to-windows-gzfbnkbgy twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Valve Sponsors Work Bringing Open-Source RADV Driver To Windows | daily.dev og:description: Valve is sponsoring Collabora engineers to port the open-source Mesa RADV Vulkan driver to Microsoft Windows. The work involves integrating with Windows WDDM2... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/valve-sponsors-work-bringing-open-source-radv-driver-to-windows-gzfbnkbgy og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/gZfbnKBGY.png og:image:alt: Valve Sponsors Work Bringing Open-Source RADV Driver To Windows 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. # Valve Sponsors Work Bringing Open-Source RADV Driver To Windows **[Phoronix](https://daily.dev/sources/phoronix)** · 2 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Valve is sponsoring Collabora engineers to port the open-source Mesa RADV Vulkan driver to Microsoft Windows. The work involves integrating with Windows WDDM2 and reverse engineering AMD's proprietary Windows kernel driver data structures, since porting the AMDGPU Linux kernel driver to Windows is out of scope. A stable documented interface or a shim library between RADV and AMD's kernel driver is needed for long-term viability. Early results show Counter-Strike 2 running via RADV on Windows, with experimental code available on a public development branch. ## 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 1 discussion and 40 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-07-29). **TL;DR:** The community is broadly positive about RADV (the open-source AMD Vulkan driver) coming to Windows, seeing it as a net win for Linux gaming via shared codebases and wider testing, though the thread quickly spirals into a broader debate about Linux gaming viability and AMD driver quality. **Sentiment:** 45% positive · 35% mixed · 20% skeptical **The case for** - More game developers testing against RADV on Windows should surface driver bugs faster and benefit Linux gamers indirectly. - A shared codebase across platforms enables easier debugging and community contributions regardless of OS. - Proton has matured significantly, making Linux a viable gaming platform for many titles already. **The pushback** - Kernel-level anti-cheat in major live-service games (Fortnite, Valorant, CoD, Apex) remains a hard blocker for Linux adoption among casual mainstream gamers. - AMD's proprietary Windows drivers have a poor reliability track record, with commenters reporting crashes, freezes, and dropped support after only ~2 years. - The ~3% Linux market share gives developers little incentive to support or unblock Linux compatibility. **By community** - hackernews (mixed): Commenters welcome the RADV-on-Windows move as good for the Linux ecosystem, but the thread is dominated by skepticism about whether Linux gaming can realistically displace Windows given anti-cheat walls, Nvidia's dominance, and AMD driver instability. **Hottest debate:** Whether casual Windows gamers could realistically switch to Linux, given that the most popular live-service games use kernel-level anti-cheat that actively blocks Linux compatibility. **Open questions** - Will Valve's reported collaboration with Nvidia lead to proper SteamOS/Nvidia support? - When, if ever, will kernel-level anti-cheat vendors (Easy Anti-Cheat, Vanguard) provide reliable Linux support? - Does running RADV on Windows actually translate to meaningful improvements for the Linux driver, or is the shared-codebase benefit overstated? **Highlights** > > Many or most of those 95% who are just using Windows for PC games and using a web browser would be well served by either trying out or having a tech-savvy neighbor help them try out a Linux distro like Bazzite. This is true until you consider what that exact casual market looks like. Mainstream casual PC gamers are overwhelmingly concentrated in live service multiplayer AAA games with kernel level anticheat. Fortnite, League of Legends, Valorant, Call of Duty, Apex Legends, etc. So it's kind of a hard spot where yes, 95% of casual windows gamers would in theory be much better off on Linux but the Catch-22 is the games that market is mostly concentrated on is the single category that still does not work on Linux. It's not like Windows is an OS they love, it's just a mandatory anti-cheat wall, but its a wall Linux can't breach yet. > — [thewebguyd on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49099812) > So, to be clear, and to really drive this point home. Gaming on Linux is absolutely viable and practical it's just the efforts are sunken by bad developers who refuse to enable compatibility or figure out a better solution. "games that market is mostly concentrated on is the single category that still does not work on Linux." All of the games you described have and will work on Linux perfectly fine under proton, it is the developers CHOICE for these games not to work. > — [vablings on hackernews · 2 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49100628) > This is a net good for Linux. Most of the PC gaming audience is on Windows, so Windows is still the primary target being developed against. Having better Vulkan on Windows means more support for Vulkan in games in the pipeline, which means better Linux support in those games over time, which ultimately benefits Steam and their hardware. > — [coderbants on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49098500) > > To me, the argument against a proprietary driver seems extremely weak if you're running Windows anyway, but I guess they see it more that if more game devs can run the RADV driver, they can get wider testing (or a simpler story for devs to test at least) and backdoor improvements into the Linux side? Are you using an AMD driver? Let me share my experience. One day, you wake up and your GPU driver is gone for no reason. I'm not even joking here—the recent driver update broke the driver for many users. Launch Battlefield 6, and your driver is... gone. A new driver update comes out... Launch Battlefield 6, hard freeze. Improvement. I'm still running an older "blessed" driver version for this reason, and I'm scared to update. > — [akazantsev on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49099004) > The problem is most people "who are just using Windows for PC games and using a web browser" are not a good fit for Linux. They don't install their OS themselves so cannot install a Linux distro. They don't do their own regular maintenance so forced updates are necessary. They expect software like Office to be available - not alternatives that work a bit differently and have buttons in unfamiliar places. Computer literacy is going down so this is only getting worse. Hardware that ships with SteamOS is the best chance to get PC gamers onto Linux. It's already being used by nearly 1% of Steam users and Steam has a lot of users. > Plus, it's been my experience that drivers for AMD's graphics cards just work better on Linux That's why Valve went with AMD for the Steam Deck and Machine. But it's also another blocker because 72% of Steam users have an Nvidia GPU. > — [Rohansi on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49100622) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49097591) · 39 points · 40 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [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 - [Cracking Windows Open: Porting RADV to WIN32](https://daily.dev/posts/cracking-windows-open-porting-radv-to-win32-f2n59xdec) · Hacker News · 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), [#mesa](https://daily.dev/tags/mesa) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/valve-sponsors-work-bringing-open-source-radv-driver-to-windows-gzfbnkbgy) ```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":"Valve Sponsors Work Bringing Open-Source RADV Driver To Windows","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/valve-sponsors-work-bringing-open-source-radv-driver-to-windows-gzfbnkbgy","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/valve-sponsors-work-bringing-open-source-radv-driver-to-windows-gzfbnkbgy"},"datePublished":"2026-07-29T10:38:19.851Z","dateModified":"2026-07-29T23:28:14.980Z","description":"Valve is sponsoring Collabora engineers to port the open-source Mesa RADV Vulkan driver to Microsoft Windows. 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