Today, July 8, 2016, Collabora’s Emil Velikov has had the honor of announcing the release of the final Mesa 12.0.0 3D Graphics Library for all GNU/Linux operating systems.
Mesa 3D Graphics Library 12.0.0 has been in development since May 2016, and it received a total of four RC (Release Candidate) builds that brought hundreds of changes, including bugfixes and improvements to existing drivers. Mesa 3D 12.0.0 is now considered the most advanced, stable version and all GNU/Linux distribution should adopt it in order to offer their users better GPU support.
Release highlights of Mesa 3D Graphics Library 12.0.0 include a Vulkan driver for Intel hardware from Ivy Bridge onward, OpenGL 4.3 support for nvc0, RadeonSI and Intel i965 8th generation hardware, OpenGL ES 3.1 support for nvc0 and RadeonSI drivers, GLVND support for OpenGL and GLX, DRI3 enablement for VDPAU, VAAPI, and OMX, as well as SWR, a brand-new Gallium software driver.
“It’s a real honor to announce Mesa 12.0.0. This release has massive amount of features,” said Emil Velikov, Software Release Engineer at Collabora. “To check the full changelog, consisting of more than 5k8 commits from over 120 developers use the following command: git log 11.2-branchpoint..mesa-12.0.0.”
Gallium radeon drivers require Linux kernel 3.2 and LLVM 3.6
The new SWR Gallium software driver needs Python 2 to build. There are also various other changes and improvements implemented in the Mesa 12.0.0 3D Graphics Library that promise to boost the GPU performance on your personal computer. For example, the Gallium Radeon drivers, such as RadeonSI, r300, and r600, will now require Linux kernel 3.2 and LLVM 3.6, or higher versions.
Other changes that have been added in the final release of Mesa 12.0.0 3D Graphics Library since the fourth and last Release Candidate, we can mention that the SWR Gallium software driver won’t ship LLVM version specific sources, and it is no longer needed to generate your own git_sha1.h file if you’re using Git tarballs. Download Mesa 3D Graphics Library 12.0.0 right now via our website.
Via Softpedia