Most Feral Games Are Currently Broken On Mesa Git, RadeonSI Also Has A Steam Issue

Mesa Git is usually relatively sane for Linux gamers wanting the bleeding-edge open-source driver experience for best OpenGL/Vulkan features and performance, but at the moment it's a bit of a headache with what in effect are two blocker bugs for Mesa 17.2.

Marc Di Luzio has confirmed that most Feral Interactive Linux game ports are currently broken on Mesa Git. Per bug 101867, all Feral games that have a pre-game options window (most of them) are now unplayable due to a permanent black frame that appears on the screen. The only workaround is to change the game's settings configuration to not show the pre-game settings window.

The issue was tracked down to a commit changing just one line of code that in turn was aiming to address other bugs, but is having fallout for Feral games. No solution has been fixed yet.

Mesa release manager Emil Velikov agrees that this is a serious bug and would be considered a blocker for next month's Mesa 17.2.

Another bug that Velikov is deeming a blocker bug is RadeonSI being broken for Steam in at least some configurations. That bug is due to a much more invasive code change and is currently leaving Steam with segmentation faults when starting on RadeonSI. Details in this bug report.

So just a quick PSA in case you are thinking of upgrading to Mesa Git in the next few days.