While Linux 5.15 has many new features and improvements, one of the patch series we have been eager to see land is the work introducing the new FUTEX2 system call. FUTEX2 can help improve the performance of newer Windows games running on Linux via Wine / Steam Play's Proton by better matching the Windows kernel behavior, but while it didn't land for Linux 5.15, at least a new version of the patches were posted.

One of the kernel patch series that has seen ongoing work for more than one year now is around introducing the FUTEX2 system call to better match the behavior of Microsoft Windows' NT kernel in order to allow for more efficient Proton/Wine usage that powers Steam Play for enjoying Windows games on Linux.

While not making it for last week's SDL 2.0.16 release, merged on Wednesday to the SDL2 development code is an "SDL_GeometryRender" interface that stems from feature requests going back nearly a decade for this graphics API independent triangle rendering API.

In addition to Tuesday seeing the Zink sub-allocator merged for sharply improving the performance of this OpenGL-on-Vulkan implementation within Mesa, the Zink Gallium3D code subsequently merged support for OpenGL compatibility contexts.

Besides the very successful Godot game engine and the up and coming O3DE, Ogre continues progressing as another useful open-source game engine. Out this weekend is Ogre 13.0 as the project switches up its versioning scheme.

DXVK has proven to be a huge success for improving the experience of running Windows Direct3D 9/10/11 games on Linux by translating those D3D calls to Vulkan. DXVK-Native meanwhile is the newer spin-off effort around providing a DXVK-based build native for Linux to help in game ports that still can then rely on their Direct3D renderer path.

Polychromatic as the long-running, third-party, open-source project to allow Razer's gaming peripherals like mice and keyboard to be configured under Linux is out with a major update.

SDL 2.0.16 is officially out today as the latest update to this widely-used cross-platform library for serving as an abstraction layer around graphics, controllers / input, and more that makes it widely used by cross-platform games as well as the likes of the Steam Runtime.

0 A.D. as the long in development real-time strategy game developed by Wildfire Games is out with its twenty-fifth alpha release.

Flax Engine 1.2.6222 is out today as the first v1.2 update for this cross-platform, open-source but commercial game engine.

The ongoing FUTEX2 work for making the futex handling more like Windows to in turn help Windows games on Linux via Wine (with a focus on Steam Play's Proton) has taken a new turn.

SDL 2.0.16 is being prepared for release as the successor to SDL 2.0.14. Particularly for Linux users this SDL 2.0.16 update is significant with some key enhancements for this library that is common to multi-platform games and part of the Steam runtime.

Lutris 0.5.9-beta1 is out this Sunday as a rather significant update to this open-source Linux game manager. With this new version there are many new features for this centralized game launcher.

Less than one month since Open 3D Engine was announced based on Amazon's Lumberyard engine, the Linux support is nearly in a pleasant state.

DXVK 1.9.1 is out as the newest version of this key component to Steam Play / Proton for running Windows games on Linux with DXVK being responsible for translating Direct3D 9/10/11 calls to Vulkan.

DXVK-NVAPI as the effort for exposing more NVIDIA driver/GPU features within DXVK for Steam Play (Proton) usage is out with a new feature release.

Ultra App Kit is a new cross-platform, user interface toolkit option focused on satisfying the needs of game engines/tooling but also covering needs for other desktop GUI applications.

With the alpha release of the Godot 4.0 open-source game engine approaching, a blog post today detailed the current graphics API support plans around this major game engine update.

The Open 3D Engine spun out of Amazon's Lumberyard game engine has been seeing progress on Vulkan 1.2 API work as well as Linux porting at large, including the bringing up of the game engine's editor on Linux.

A set of Linux kernel patches to the asus-wmi driver are pending that improve the support for newer ASUS gaming laptops.

Even with Steam Play continuing to get into quite good shape for running recent Windows game releases on Linux with ease thanks to the work Valve has been investing into Proton, DXVK, VKD3D-Proton, and lower-level Linux graphics infrastructure, for now at least the overall marketshare is holding steady at around 0.8~0.9% for the past number of months.

Valve and their partners have issued a new version of Proton for powering Steam Play to enjoy Windows games on Linux.

Following last month's Unvanquished 0.52 beta for this open-source game that has long been in development, Sunday marked the release of Unvanquished 0.52.1.

Just in time for the weekend Linux gamers is a new release candidate of the upcoming Proton 6.3-5 that powers Valve's Steam Play for running Windows games on Linux.

Similar to Portal 2 getting Vulkan rendering support earlier this year by leveraging DXVK to convert Direct3D calls to Vulkan, Valve's Left 4 Dead 2 has now received similar treatment alongside a big update out today.

The latest updates to Valve's Proton Experimental build for Steam Play should be offering lower input latency.

Ahead of the long-awaited Atari VCS game console launching this month, the SDL2 library has added the mapping for the Linux game console's controllers.

Epic Games today pushed Unreal Engine 5 out to early access. Like with UE4, Unreal Engine 5 continues offering native Linux support and allowing use of the Vulkan API.

While the Nintendo Wii U game console is approaching a decade since launch and has already been discontinued for several years, work towards a mainline Linux kernel driver for properly supporting the Wii U gamepad continues.

Following this week's id Tech 3 based Daemon engine update, the open-source first person shooter / real-time strategy game Unvanquished has just issued its long overdue v0.52 beta release.