Luis Chamberlain sent out the modules changes today for the Linux 6.6 merge window. Most notable with the modules update is a change that better builds up the defenses against NVIDIA’s proprietary kernel driver from using GPL-only symbols. Or in other words, bits that only true open-source drivers should be utilizing and not proprietary kernel drivers like NVIDIA’s default Linux driver in respecting the original kernel code author’s intent.
Back in 2020 when the original defense was added, NVIDIA recommended avoiding the Linux 5.9 for the time being. They ended up having a supported driver several weeks later. It will be interesting to see this time how long Linux 6.6+ thwarts their kernel driver.
Ah, I just upgraded from RX580 to 6600XT and haven’t had any freezes so far. On RX580 I sometimes had games that managed to freeze the system complete with random pixel noise and VRAM fragments shown on screen for seconds before it rebooted, but that was a long time back and only on bleeding-edge Mesa and Proton Experimental so my own fault.
Mesa 22 and 23 have been great so far. Maybe the firmware got more stable as well (I’m on Debian). I’d definitely recommend an RDNA2 card over any Nvidia today despite some of these hiccups.
The GTX 1070 in my other machine has given me more headaches (kernel modules not compatible with newer kernels, random Vulkan issues resulting in broken shaders showing nonsense like sparkles or black areas, etc.).
My rx 480 worked way better in terms of not crashing, it did have graphical glitches in games but i guessed thats down to using Wine. Im also using Arch so maybe that in combination with the 6650 is making it more unstable, i gotta revert to using LTS kernel every few months to stop my system crashing randomly