Running The Open-Source Upstream V3D Driver On The Raspberry Pi 4 & Newer

As of this summer the upstream, open-source Broadcom V3D direct rendering manager kernel driver has enabled support for the Raspberry Pi 4 (and newer). With the latest mainline Linux kernel builds this means the ability to enjoy accelerated graphics on the Raspberry Pi hardware paired with the latest Mesa OpenGL/Vulkan driver code without worrying about out-of-tree patches.

For those wondering how to go about making use of the upstream V3D kernel driver on the Raspberry Pi, Melissa Wen with Igalia has written a blog post covering the process. Namely, she documents the required kernel configuration knobs for enabling the driver, setting the boot configuration, and related bits of deploying a custom kernel to the Raspberry Pi.

If this interests you for using the upstream V3D driver on the Raspberry Pi with your own custom kernel build, stop by Melissa's blog for the full instructions.