Nouveau: Accelerated Open Source driver for NVIDIA GPUs
The nouveau project aims to build high-quality, free/libre software drivers for NVIDIA GPUs. “Nouveau” [nuvo] is the French word for “new”. Nouveau is composed of a Linux kernel driver (nouveau) and OpenGL and Vulkan drivers in Mesa.
Current Status
- OpenGL is supported on all GPUs.
- Vulkan is supported on all Kepler and later GPUs.
- Video decoding acceleration supported on most pre-Maxwell cards; see VideoAcceleration for details.
- Automatic reclocking available for Turing and newer GPUs through GSP firmware.
- Support for manual performance level selection (also known as "reclocking") on GM10x Maxwell, Kepler and Tesla G94-GT218 GPUs. Available in
/sys/kernel/debug/dri/0/pstate. There is little hope of reclocking becoming available for GM20x, GP10x and GV100 as firmware now needs to be signed by NVIDIA to have the necessary access.
News
- Aug, 2025: NVK enabled for Blackwell and Kepler GPUs starting with mesa 25.2
- Apr, 2025: NVK enabled for Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta GPUs
- Mar, 2025: Zink enabled by default as the preferred OpenGL driver for Turing and later GPUs, starting with Mesa 25.1.
- Dec, 2024: NVK is now a conformant Vulkan 1.4 implementation
- Feb, 2024: NVK enabled by default in Mesa
- Nov, 2023: AD10x and GSP support merged in Linux 6.7.
Software
| Linux Kernel | git |
| libdrm | git |
| Mesa | git |
| xf86-video-nouveau | git |
Contacting the Team
Common Tasks
- Installing Nouveau
- Multiple monitors: Randr12 and MultiMonitorDesktop
- Prime/Optimus: Optimus
- VDPAU/XvMC: Video decoding acceleration
- KernelModuleParameters
Get Involved
- Join us on IRC
- Become a developer
- Run tests on your hardware
- Donate hardware
- Available tasks on Trello, CTS issues on Trello, Old ToDo list
Report Bugs
Development/Debugging
- Development resources
- envytools: RE tools and docs
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