Mesa for Devuan Excalibur (Debian Trixie base)

Optimized Mesa (video driver) packages for Devuan Excalibur and Debian Trixie, built for modern CPUs.

Requirements

• Distribution: Devuan Excalibur (stable) or Debian Trixie (stable)
• Architecture: amd64
• CPU: x86-64-v3 (AVX2) or x86-64-v4 (AVX-512) - pick the matching variant

Packages will not run on CPUs without AVX2/AVX-512. Check support:

grep -o 'avx[0-9_]*' /proc/cpuinfo | sort -u

If the output is empty - do not install these packages.

Packages

Package list

Package	Purpose
mesa-libgallium	Main Gallium library (radeonsi, llvmpipe, ...)
mesa-vulkan-drivers	Vulkan drivers (RADV for AMD)
libgl1-mesa-dri	DRI drivers for OpenGL
libglx-mesa0	GLX library
libegl-mesa0	EGL library
libgbm1	GBM (buffers for Wayland/KMS)
libosmesa6	Offscreen rendering
libxatracker2	XA tracker (XvBA)
mesa-va-drivers	VA-API (hardware video decoding)
mesa-vdpau-drivers	VDPAU (hardware video decoding)
mesa-drm-shim	Libraries for testing DRM drivers
libd3dadapter9-mesa	Gallium3D state tracker
mesa-opencl-icd	OpenCL library

Development headers (*-dev) are also published in the same repository for users who build against Mesa.

Each release is published as two variants:

Codename	CPU requirement	Version suffix
stable-avx2	x86-64-v3 (AVX2)	+avx2
stable-avx512	x86-64-v4 (AVX-512)	+avx512

Debug packages (*-dbgsym) are not included - they do not affect performance and only take up space.

APT repository

The repository is hosted on GitHub Pages:

https://argonforge.github.io/mesa-builds

1. Import the signing key

curl -fsSL https://argonforge.github.io/mesa-builds/public.asc \
  | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/argonforge-mesa.gpg

2. Add the repository

Pick the codename matching your CPU. Only one of the two, not both.

For x86-64-v3 (AVX2 - most x86-64 CPUs from 2013+):

echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/argonforge-mesa.gpg] https://argonforge.github.io/mesa-builds stable-avx2 main" \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/argonforge-mesa.list

For x86-64-v4 (AVX-512 - Zen 4/5):

echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/argonforge-mesa.gpg] https://argonforge.github.io/mesa-builds stable-avx512 main" \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/argonforge-mesa.list

3. Install

APT command

sudo apt update
sudo apt install \
    mesa-libgallium \
    mesa-vulkan-drivers \
    libgl1-mesa-dri \
    libglx-mesa0 \
    libegl-mesa0 \
    libgbm1 \
    libosmesa6 \
    libxatracker2 \
    mesa-va-drivers \
    mesa-vdpau-drivers \
    libd3dadapter9-mesa \
    mesa-drm-shim \
    mesa-opencl-icd

apt may mark the packages as DOWNGRADING if a newer version was installed from another source. This is expected - the Argon Forge build replaces the stock packages.

4. Hold versions (recommended)

To prevent apt upgrade from reverting to stock packages:

MESA_PKGS="libd3dadapter9-mesa libegl-mesa0 libgbm1 libgl1-mesa-dri \
  libglx-mesa0 libosmesa6 libxatracker2 mesa-drm-shim mesa-libgallium \
  mesa-opencl-icd mesa-va-drivers mesa-vdpau-drivers mesa-vulkan-drivers"

sudo apt-mark hold $MESA_PKGS

5. Reboot

sudo reboot

6. Verify

# Confirm the version
apt policy mesa-libgallium

# OpenGL
glxinfo | grep "OpenGL renderer"

# Vulkan
vulkaninfo --summary | grep -A 3 GPU0

Expected output (for Radeon 780M):

OpenGL renderer string: AMD Radeon 780M (radeonsi, phoenix, ...)
deviceName = AMD Radeon 780M (RADV PHOENIX)
driverName = radv
driverInfo = Mesa 25.0.7-2+deb13u1+avx512

The version string should end with +avx2 or +avx512 depending on the codename you selected.

Manual installation (alternative)

If you prefer not to add the repository:

1. Download and extract

mkdir -p ~/mesa-opt && cd ~/mesa-opt
gh release download --repo argonforge/mesa-builds --pattern '*.zst'

# Unpack archives matching your CPU and needs:
tar --zstd -xf mesa-*-x86-64-v4.tar.zst        # AVX-512 runtime
tar --zstd -xf mesa-*-dev-x86-64-v4.tar.zst    # optional: dev headers

Or download the .zst files manually from the Releases page. The *dev* archives are optional - skip them if you don't need development headers.

2. Back up current packages

sudo mkdir -p /root/mesa-backup
sudo cp /var/cache/apt/archives/mesa-*.deb /root/mesa-backup/ 2>/dev/null || true

3. Install

cd ~/mesa-opt
sudo apt install ./packages/*.deb

The ./ prefix is required - otherwise apt will look for packages in repositories.

Rollback

If graphics become unstable, freeze, or show artifacts:

# Unhold
MESA_PKGS="libd3dadapter9-mesa libegl-mesa0 libgbm1 libgl1-mesa-dri \
  libglx-mesa0 libosmesa6 libxatracker2 mesa-drm-shim mesa-libgallium \
  mesa-opencl-icd mesa-va-drivers mesa-vdpau-drivers mesa-vulkan-drivers"
sudo apt-mark unhold $MESA_PKGS

# Remove the Argon Forge repository
sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/argonforge-mesa.list
sudo apt update

# Reinstall stock versions
sudo apt install --reinstall $MESA_PKGS

sudo reboot

If you installed manually:

sudo apt install --reinstall $MESA_PKGS
sudo reboot

Expected Performance

Component	Gain	Comment
CPU part of driver (radeonsi/RADV)	1-3%	Noticeable only in CPU-bound scenarios
Shader compilation (ACO)	0%	ACO does not use Mesa build flags
Games on iGPU (Radeon 780M)	~0-2%	Bottleneck is memory bandwidth

Honest note: the gain is small and mostly matters in CPU-bound scenarios. For iGPU (Radeon 780M) memory bandwidth is the bottleneck, not driver code.

Source workflow: .github/workflows/build-devuan-stable.yml.

Companion projects

For a complete optimized graphics stack on AMD Zen (x86-64-v3/v4):

Project	Purpose
gamescope-builds	Micro-compositor for game scaling
dxvk-builds	DXVK (D3D9/10/11 -> Vulkan)
vkd3d-proton-builds	VKD3D-Proton (D3D12 -> Vulkan)
wine-builds	Wine WoW64 (Clang)

Important

• Packages are built for Debian Trixie / Devuan Excalibur (same library base). Installing on Bookworm, Daedalus or other releases will break graphics due to glibc and library version mismatches.
• Packages are signed with the Argon Forge key. Verify the fingerprint against the one published at https://argonforge.github.io/mesa-builds/public.asc before trusting the repository.
• Do not add both codenames (stable-avx2 and stable-avx512) at the same time. Choose the one matching your CPU.
• Do not install v4 packages if you are unsure about AVX-512 support. Use stable-avx2 if your CPU has only AVX2.
• The author is not responsible for any system issues. Always have a Live USB ready for recovery.

License

The build scripts and GitHub Actions workflows in this repository are licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE file.

The Mesa source code and Debian packaging files are distributed under their respective licenses - see the mesa source package for details. The compiled .deb packages in Releases and in the APT repository are redistributions of Mesa under its original license.