SteamVR: Missing H265 Support for AMD radv drivers

English Hardware
1

I have been trying to get my Steam Frame connected to SteamVR on OpenSuse Tumbleweed but when connecting it’s rejecting the radv drivers since they don’t support H265.

I understand that the driver can’t include H265 by default because of licscencing, but I also wasn’t able to find a way to swap to an Driver with H265 support on Opensuse.

Does anyone have Suggestions on this?

SteamVR Error:

Sat Oct 03 2026 01:45:25.340862 [Info] - vrlink: [HMDVulkan] Checking device 'AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT (RADV GFX1201)' with driver 'radv' 
Sat Oct 03 2026 01:45:25.340908 [Info] - vrlink: [HMDVulkan] Rejecting driver 'radv' as it was explicitly compiled without H265 support 
Sat Oct 03 2026 01:45:25.340946 [Info] - vrlink: [HMDVulkan] Failed to create device... Exiting... 
Sat Oct 03 2026 01:45:25.340984 [Info] - vrlink: [HMDVulkan] Deactivate() 
Sat Oct 03 2026 01:45:25.341025 [Info] - vrlink: [HMDVulkan] DestroyEncodeBackbuffers

System Informations:
Operating System: openSUSE Tumbleweed 20260930
KDE Plasma Version: 6.7.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.30.0
Qt Version: 6.11.2
Kernel Version: 7.2.8-1-default (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 16 × AMD Ryzen 7 7700X 8-Core Processor
Memory: 64 GiB of RAM (61.9 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor 1: AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT
Graphics Processor 2: AMD Ryzen 7 7700X 8-Core Processor
Manufacturer: ASRock
Product Name: X670E PG Lightning

1 Like
2

Which Mesa packages do you currently have installed (and from which repo)?

zypper se -s mesa-vulkan-radeon mesa-vulkan-device-select libvulkan_radeon
3

It’s time for an Update.
Shortly after i posted this, in an list ditch effort I attempted to swap over Mesa from the OpenSuse-Repository to Packman.
This did work for adding the desired h265 support and SteamVR is now working (unstably).

Before:
Mesa 26.2.3 from OpenSuse

Now:
Mesa 26.2.4 from Packman

I wasn’t able to migrate all packages since there were some dependencies on the OpenSuse Packages, for example libavcodec62-32bit which seems to be required by Steam.
So now I have a mix of Opensuse and Packman Mesa Packages as you can see by the output of

zypper se -s mesa-vulkan-radeon mesa-vulkan-device-select libvulkan_radeon

S  | Name                                      | Type  | Version            | Arch   | Repository
---+-------------------------------------------+-------+--------------------+--------+-----------------------
i+ | libvulkan_radeon                          | Paket | 26.2.4-1699.2.pm.2 | x86_64 | Packman
v  | libvulkan_radeon                          | Paket | 26.2.4-1699.2.pm.2 | i586   | Packman
v  | libvulkan_radeon                          | Paket | 26.2.4-1.1         | x86_64 | Haupt-Repository (OSS)
i+ | libvulkan_radeon-32bit                    | Paket | 26.2.4-1699.2.pm.2 | x86_64 | Packman
v  | libvulkan_radeon-32bit                    | Paket | 26.2.4-1.1         | x86_64 | Haupt-Repository (OSS)
   | libvulkan_radeon-32bit-debuginfo          | Paket | 26.2.4-1699.2.pm.2 | x86_64 | Packman
   | libvulkan_radeon-debuginfo                | Paket | 26.2.4-1699.2.pm.2 | x86_64 | Packman
   | libvulkan_radeon-debuginfo                | Paket | 26.2.4-1699.2.pm.2 | i586   | Packman
i+ | Mesa-vulkan-device-select                 | Paket | 26.2.4-1699.2.pm.2 | x86_64 | Packman
v  | Mesa-vulkan-device-select                 | Paket | 26.2.4-1699.2.pm.2 | i586   | Packman
v  | Mesa-vulkan-device-select                 | Paket | 26.2.4-1.1         | x86_64 | Haupt-Repository (OSS)
i+ | Mesa-vulkan-device-select-32bit           | Paket | 26.2.4-1699.2.pm.2 | x86_64 | Packman
v  | Mesa-vulkan-device-select-32bit           | Paket | 26.2.4-1.1         | x86_64 | Haupt-Repository (OSS)
   | Mesa-vulkan-device-select-32bit-debuginfo | Paket | 26.2.4-1699.2.pm.2 | x86_64 | Packman
   | Mesa-vulkan-device-select-debuginfo       | Paket | 26.2.4-1699.2.pm.2 | x86_64 | Packman
   | Mesa-vulkan-device-select-debuginfo       | Paket | 26.2.4-1699.2.pm.2 | i586   | Packman

I assume this is not ideal, what would be the proper way to do this?

4

All your installed packages are from Packman (see the >i+<), so if there is a problem it is not shown here.