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⇱ Venus Vulkan Driver Lands Mesh Shader Support In Mesa 26.0 - Phoronix


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Venus Vulkan Driver Lands Mesh Shader Support In Mesa 26.0

Written by Michael Larabel in Mesa on 5 December 2025 at 09:03 AM EST. 10 Comments
Venus is the VirtIO-GPU driver that allows for Vulkan support within guest virtual machines permitting sufficient host driver support and other requirements in place with hypervisors like CrosVM and QEMU. The Venus driver now supports Vulkan's mesh shader capabilities and in turn advances the DXVK-Proton support for Linux gaming within VMs.

Merged this week is the Venus driver now able to advertiseVK_EXT_mesh_shader support, permitting sufficient host Vulkan driver support. Venus follows the Intel ANV and Radeon RADV drivers as well as the software-based Lavapipe driver in handling Vulkan mesh shaders on this open-source driver stack.

👁 Venus Mesh shader merge


As noted in the merge request, this is the last piece needed for getting Venus to VKD3D-Proton Feature Level 12_2 for the Direct3D 12 feature level atop Vulkan. FL 12_2 should help in getting more Steam Play (Proton) games with VKD3D-Proton now playable within virtual machines using the Venus VirtIO-GPU driver.

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.