July 29, 2026
Windows vs. Linux: driver drama
Valve Sponsors Work Bringing Open-Source RADV Driver to Windows
Valve takes a Linux gaming win into Windows—and the comments are fighting already
TLDR: Valve is paying developers to make its popular open-source AMD gaming driver work on Windows, a move that could help more games run better across both operating systems. The comments split fast between anti-Windows outrage and pragmatists arguing this could quietly be a huge win for Linux gamers.
Valve is backing an unusual mission: bringing the open-source graphics driver that helped power the Steam Deck’s success over to Windows, the very platform some Linux fans love to boo. In plain English, that means the same community-built software many AMD gamers trust on Linux might one day run Microsoft’s gaming empire too. And yes, people instantly turned this into a culture-war popcorn bucket.
The loudest reaction was pure anti-Windows theater. One commenter bluntly begged, “Can we please let Windows die already”, which pretty much set the mood for the dramatic side of the thread. But others jumped in with a much more strategic take: if game makers test their games against the same driver on both Linux and Windows, Linux players could actually win big. That turned the comments into a fun little civil war between the “why help Windows?” crowd and the “this secretly helps Linux” camp.
There was also some underdog energy. One user dropped a link to the developer’s own explanation, arguing this matters because Windows users are still mostly stuck with closed, company-controlled software. Another commenter went full wishful thinking and said this whole thing gave them hope that maybe, someday, the Steam Controller could finally get a proper Windows driver too. And perhaps the happiest gamer in the room was the Linux fan cheering that more eyes on this driver could mean bugs get caught faster. So the vibe is clear: half rebellion, half master plan, and just enough nostalgia to keep it spicy.
Key Points
- •Valve is funding Collabora engineers to explore porting the open-source Mesa RADV Vulkan driver to Microsoft Windows.
- •The Windows port includes work on WDDM2 integration and depends on AMD’s official Windows kernel driver rather than a port of the Linux AMDGPU kernel driver.
- •Adapting RADV to AMD’s proprietary Windows kernel driver has required reverse engineering of driver data structures and related elements.
- •The article says a stable documented interface from AMD or a shim library would likely be needed for long-term maintainability across Windows driver releases.
- •The team has demonstrated Counter-Strike 2 running with RADV on Windows, and the experimental code is available in a development branch.