(more Linux news in original post)

Wireless VR streaming levels up on Linux with the latest WiVRn release:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/02/wireless-vr-streaming-levels-up-on-linux-with-the-latest-wivrn-release/

Wine 11.2 released with optimizations in PDB loading, support for MSVC constructors:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/02/wine-11-2-released-with-optimizations-in-pdb-loading-support-for-msvc-constructors/

Wine-Staging 11.2 Brings More Patches To Help Adobe Photoshop On Linux:
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Wine-Staging-11.2

New Proton Experimental update adds controller support to more launchers on Linux / SteamOS:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/02/proton-experimental-update-adds-controller-support-to-more-launchers-linux-steamos/

GE-Proton 10-30 released with fixes for Arknights Endfield and the EA app:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/02/ge-proton-10-30-released-with-fixes-for-arknights-endfield-and-the-ea-app/

Prefixer is a modern alternative to Protontricks that's faster and simpler:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/02/prefixer-is-a-modern-alternative-to-protontricks-thats-faster-and-simpler/

Vulkan-based translation layer D7VK officially expands to include Direct3D 5 support:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/02/vulkan-based-translation-layer-d7vk-officially-expands-to-include-direct3d-5-support/

Linux Kernel 6.19 Officially Released, This Is What's New:
https://9to5linux.com/linux-kernel-6-19-officially-released-this-is-whats-new

GNU Linux-Libre 6.19 Kernel Is Now Available for Software Freedom Lovers:
https://9to5linux.com/gnu-linux-libre-6-19-kernel-is-now-available-for-software-freedom-lovers

Linux 7.0 Kernel Confirmed by Linus Torvalds, Expected in Mid-April 2026:
https://9to5linux.com/linux-7-0-kernel-confirmed-by-linus-torvalds-expected-in-mid-april-2026

NVIDIA Posts Open-Source Nouveau GSP Driver Support For GA100:
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Nouveau-GSP-NVIDIA-GA100

X.Org Server's "Master" Branch Now Closed With Cleaned Up State On "Main":
https://www.phoronix.com/news/X.Org-Server-On-Main

GNU Binutils 2.46 Adds Support for AMD Zen6 CPUs, SFrame v3, and More:
https://9to5linux.com/gnu-binutils-2-46-adds-support-for-amd-zen6-cpus-sframe-v3-and-more

Mesa 25.3.5 arrives with bug fixes for open source Linux graphics drivers:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/02/mesa-25-3-5-arrives-with-bug-fixes-for-open-source-linux-graphics-drivers/

Mesa 26.0 Open-Source Graphics Stack Officially Released, Here's What's New:
https://9to5linux.com/mesa-26-0-open-source-graphics-stack-officially-released-heres-whats-new

EXT4 In Linux 7.0 Improves Write Performance For Concurrent Direct I/O Writes:
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.0-EXT4

Btrfs Brings Experimental Remap-Tree Feature & More In Linux 7.0:
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.0-Btrfs-Changes

NetworkManager 1.56 Released with New Features and Improvements:
https://9to5linux.com/networkmanager-1-56-released-with-new-features-and-improvements

(FOSS news in comments)

#WeeklyNews #News #Linux #LinuxNews #VR #Wine #WineStaging #Proton #GEProton #D7VK #Vulkan #Prefixer #LinuxKernel #LinuxLibre #XOrg #GNUBinutils #Mesa #EXT4 #Btrfs #NetworkManager #WiVRn #FosseryTech

Wireless VR streaming levels up on Linux with the latest WiVRn release #WiVRn #VR #Linux #LinuxGaming

Wireless VR streaming levels u...

Wireless VR streaming levels up on Linux with the latest WiVRn release https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/02/wireless-vr-streaming-levels-up-on-linux-with-the-latest-wivrn-release/

#WiVRn #VR #Linux #LinuxGaming

Flashing the wrong firmware to my 3070 was a stroke of genius.

When I use #WiVRn with GPU Encoding and run a game, it absolutely sits at the power limit (300W) when the original was 240W, with an extended limit at 270W, while now it's 270W up to 300W.

And it will sit at 300W all day long. Thank you EVGA for overbuilding these cards so much. <3

(I flashed the FTW3 firmware to my XC3 Ultra)

...It amuses me opening OpenRGB and seeing "EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra LHR" instead of the XC3 Ultra as well.

Anyone know if it's possible to make the clocks in wlx-overlay-s use 12 hour formatting instead of 24?

#Linux #LinuxVR #WiVRn #wlx_overlay_s

If you play #VR games on #Linux and use #ALVR for streaming, throw it away and use #WiVRN instead. It's just better. Ten thousand times better. #VideoGames

Consegui fazer meu setup de realidade virtual funcionar no Linux usando a stack open source! Usei Monado (runtime OpenXR e OpenVR via OpenComposite); #WiVRn (conexão com headset standalone, Oculus Quest 2) e #WlxOverlayS, um overlay para acessar o desktop, monitores, controlar volume, teclado virtual etc...

Os recursos do WlxOverlayS são algo que jamais funcionou no meu setup de antes com SteamVR (runtime) e ALVR (conexão headset) no Linux, por mais que no Windows desse certo via Virtual Desktop. A Valve ainda não tornou o cliente da Steam nativo sob Wayland, acho que isso acaba limitando as funcionalidades que o próprio SteamVR consegue fornecer em Wayland no Linux por conta disso - captura de tela via portais e pipewire, principalmente. Felizmente, o lado open source da força veio para nos salvar!

Consegui rodar todos os meus jogos de realidade virtual da Steam através desse setup (só requer colocar umas variáveis de ambiente nas opções de inicialização deles) e ainda por cima consigo usar um monte de utilitários baseados em OpenXR como o WayVR e WayVRDashboard :)

Experimental #OpenXR support just got merged and will be available in the next release. It makes using #Overte in #VR on #Linux much easier and more compatible with #opensource runtimes such as #Monado and #WiVRn. It can be enabled with `--useExperimentalXR` command line parameter. Thanks to Lubosz and Ada for contributing this amazing feature! #foss

@duckdotexe good for you!

But ... what is the alternative?

Disclaimer: I have a Quest3 and adore to play with the technology like #wivrn and #wlx_overlay_s

@franciswashere today started #wlx_overlay_s inside #wivrn

Still a lot to discover in this VR world!

So we just completed our first full #VRChat session under #Linux and we have some thoughts that we wanted to share :) Long post incoming~

First off - we are honestly very impressed how far #VR has come on Linux. We remember when the Vive and Valve Index was the only headsets that would work at all, so the fact that we have not one but two wireless streaming solutions for the Quest headsets is awesome. #ALVR and #WiVRn are both amazing pieces of software, and it makes me happy to see that you can combine them with Proton to make Windows VR games work on Linux. And, all of these worked flawlessly on Wayland with an NVIDIA GPU, which honestly kind of shocks us.

That being said I want to talk about a few things - our experience with VRChat on Linux specifically, and our experience with both ALVR and WiVRn, since we used both during this play session.

(For reference sake, all playing was done on Nobara Linux 40. Our system has a Ryzen 7 7800X3D, an RTX 3080 Ti, and 32GB of DDR5.)

Starting with VRChat specifically, we did a three-hour session. We spent it with a friend, hopping around Winter VKet for a while and then settling down in a chill world. All in all, using the custom Proton-GE-RTSP fork, it worked almost exactly like it did on Windows. Video players and music worked, AudioLink worked, everything rendered correctly, and the experimental Linux build of VRCX has 99% of the functionality it does on Windows. Really impressive stuff. We did crash three times - twice in ALVR and once in WiVRn - which is suboptimal, but random crashes aren’t necessarily a Linux-only problem; although they did occur more frequently than usual. Performance was ultimately good enough, but it did look visually worse than on Windows and ran a little worse too, with more framerate drops and more inconsistent frame-pacing.

Now, as for the VR streaming solutions themselves.

ALVR was a bit more reliable out of the gate. It’s more polished and has more features, and connecting to our PC had less hangups than WiVRn. Customization is boundless (perhaps too boundless…), and we feel it is the closest thing to a “Virtual Desktop replacement” on the platform. It hooks into SteamVR, like VD, and generally ‘just works’. Visual fidelity felt ‘good enough’, but the default foveation was very aggressive, to the point of feeling almost low-res and distracting. The image also, weirdly, lacked some contrast, and looked kinda washed out. Playable, but not great. ALVR also felt smoother out of the two, but would have some really disorienting moments if the FPS dipped too much, like reprojection or motion smoothing weren’t quite working. It also crashed pretty catastrophically at one point, taking both SteamVR and VRChat with it, but we’re not really sure what caused this - the world we were in had a lot of different audio sources playing, so maybe this was an issue with Proton-GE-RTSP or SteamVR or something else. Still, it sucked.

WiVRn + Monado worked better than we’d expected. Visual fidelity was better, and the image had more contrast and looked more vivid than ALVR. However, it felt notably more jittery. Frametimes felt higher, even though the framerate was statistically higher than ALVR, almost as if it wasn’t doing any reprojection at all. It wouldn’t halve the framerate like VD or ALVR do when they can’t reach the target (in this case, 120 FPS), so the framerate would often hover around 80-90 FPS or so. Despite this, we never got that disorienting “floaty”/“shaky” feeling that ALVR gave us when it was struggling. We think it was ultimately a slightly better experience than ALVR, but not by much. That being said, because it uses Monado as its VR runtime instead of SteamVR, the “initializing/connecting” screens in between worlds didn’t render properly, which made it impossible to tell that VRC had actually crashed when we entered a world portal. We waited for about two minutes before realizing the game needed to be force-quit and restarted. Unsure if this was a VRC problem, or a WiVRn problem, but portals did work fine for us in ALVR.

At the end of it though, it was a successful VRChat session. We still have reservations - stability is lessened, both WiVRn and ALVR look worse than Virtual Desktop, and performance takes a notable hit - so we’re not sure if we’ll stick with Linux full-time. But it’s awesome that VR has come this far. We’d say that for those who are truly Windows-averse, Linux is definitely viable for social VR. It may not beat Windows just yet, but it’s amazing to see that for those who decide to switch, it’s one less thing they have to leave behind.

Does anyone know how I might get playspace dragging in #wivrn ? #VR #Linux

For anybody stuck with a #quest2 or #quest3 on #Linux, while #ALVR is awesome and popular, check out #WiVRn (https://github.com/WiVRn/WiVRn) for a pure(ish) OpenXR experience! (Also, boost that FPS a bit!)

I'd like to quickly shoutout WiVRn.

It's a FOSS application that lets you stream VR games from your linux PC to your standalone VR headsets (Quest, Pico).

I'm frequently playing around with VR on linux and steamvr isn't the best experience because it jitters a ton on linux, but with WiVRn everything is buttery smooth and things pretty much "just work" as you would expect them to.

My Beat Saber tracking is also way more accurate on WiVRn than on SteamVR.

Seriously an incredible job by all the devs involved.

#VR #VirtualReality #Linux #FOSS #WiVRn

Ok yeah #WiVRn works WAY better than #ALVR.