NVIDIA's open-source Linux driver ecosystem saw major developments in 2025. The Rust-based Nova driver was submitted for Linux 6.15 and continues active development with NVIDIA engineer co-maintainership, targeting RTX 20 series and newer GPUs. The Mesa NVK Vulkan driver received NDA documentation support from NVIDIA and improved performance. Linux 6.16 added Blackwell open-source support to Nouveau. NVIDIA announced CUDA support for RISC-V and confirmed the R580 driver series will be the last supporting Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta GPUs. Multiple benchmarks showed competitive performance between open-source drivers (NVK/Nouveau) and proprietary drivers across RTX 40 and 50 series cards, with Vulkan machine learning approaching CUDA performance levels.
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