The Linux 6.19 merge window had [1]introduced support for larger pages and compression with the Nouveau kernel driver, which ultimately should help provide a performance win to this open-source NVIDIA driver. The Mesa NVK driver was ready to make use of that new kernel driver functionality but then [2]it ended up being disabled due to bugs . Fortunately, for the Linux 6.20~7.0 kernel those issues should be resolved so then the Mesa NVK usage of the larger pages / compression support could be restored.

Red Hat engineer David Airlie today published [3]a blog post outlining his latest bug fixes to the Nouveau kernel driver code. One was around a suspend issue with a NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada GPU and the other bug was around the larger pages support.

Thankfully Airlie was able to track down the Nouveau kernel driver issues for this feature that should provide "good speedups for games." Airlie has those fixes queued up in drm-misc-next-fixes. With being in the "-next-fixes" code rather than the immediate "-fixes", those fixes will be waiting until the next kernel cycle.

The Linux 6.20~7.0 kernel merge window is expected to kickoff next week and once all of the Direct Rendering Manager "-next" changes are submitted this fixed-up Nouveau larger pages support should make it in there during that two-week merge window.

Update: [4]This Mesa merge will re-enable compression support for the NVK Vulkan driver when running on the forthcoming Nouveau driver update.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.19-Nouveau-Larger-Pages

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Mesa-Disable-NVK-Large-Page

[3] https://airlied.blogspot.com/2026/02/nouveau-tale-of-two-bugs.html

[4] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/commit/b524bf368e8efa7cd024bc8497c3a09dcab71f85