David Airlie, a Red Hat graphics engineer, just posted patches that bring HDMI Fixed Rate Link support to the open-source Nouveau driver for NVIDIA GPUs. This move opens the door to 4K at 120Hz and beyond on Linux desktops, something proprietary drivers have handled for years but open-source efforts have chased amid roadblocks. Tested on an Ampere GA106 chip paired with an Elgato HDMI 2.1 capture card, the code works. Airlie’s series hit the mailing lists on April 23, 2026, targeting the Linux 7.2 kernel cycle this summer. HDMI FRL powers the higher bandwidth modes of HDMI 2.1, ditching the old TMDS signaling for faster, more reliable links up to 48Gbps. Without it, Linux users with NVIDIA cards stuck to HDMI 2.0 limits—think 4K 60Hz max in many cases, or chroma subsampling for higher rates. Nouveau’s breakthrough sidesteps the headaches that have plagued competitors. The GPU System Processor firmware, or GSP, does the heavy lifting.…