Long before the likes of DXVK for Direct3D APIs implemented atop Vulkan, and even before the Vulkan API was conceived, there’s been Gallium Nine as a Direct3D 9 state tracker implementation for Gallium3D. Gallium Nine showed promise in its early days for speeding up D3D9 Windows games running atop Wine on Linux. But with DXVK working out better these days and Gallium Nine no longer being maintained in recent times, it’s now deprecated and set for removal later this year.
Gallium Nine was an interesting effort a decade ago for implementing Direct3D 9 APIs within Mesa to boost the Wine-fueled Linux gaming experience. But with DXVK (and VKD3D-Proton for D3D12) working out much better and working for non-Mesa drivers too, Gallium Nine is being sunset.
Mike Blumenkrantz went ahead and deprecated Gallium Nine for the upcoming Mesa 25.1 feature release. The plan is to remove the state tracker in Q3 with the release of Mesa 25.2.
In the same merge, Gallium-XA was also deprecated. Gallium XA was developed by VMware for X.Org Server acceleration in conjunction with their DDX driver. Gallium XA is of little use these days given the widespread use of Wayland making Gallium XA irrelevant along with the likes of the GLAMOR DDX driver. Gallium-XA should also be removed in the third quarter for Mesa 25.2.
