Intel works on making gaming on Linux better as it scouts for new talent

2025 wasn’t a great year for Intel. The company laid off a lot of its workers, which included some people who were maintaining Linux drivers within Intel. Unfortunately, once the person who was in charge of tending to a driver was let go, it meant the driver was left in a state of limbo, unless someone came along and ‘adopted’ it again. Some popular drivers, such as one for the popular temperature tracker CoreTemp, got left in the dust during the layoffs.

Well, there’s some good news for fans of gaming on Linux. Despite the brutal round of layoffs, the company seems ready to rebuild its Linux department. The company has posted several job applications, and one of them seems focused on improving gaming on the FOSS operating system.

Related

Linux hits a snag as Intel employees maintaining some of its drivers are laid off

A sudden wave of layoffs at Intel leaves Linux drivers orphaned and vulnerable.

Intel begins rebuilding its Linux team, and it does include gaming

I’m cautiously optimistic

As spotted by Phoronix, Intel has posted a new wave of job applications. This comes hot off the heels of several waves of layoffs within the company, meaning this is less Intel bolstering its teams with talent and more about trying to get teams going in the first place. While the company did post a handful of adverts, one sticks out in particular. It’s a call for GPU software development engineers, and the job description asks for some very interesting qualifications:

Preferred Qualifications:

• Programming languages – C or C++ project development and with open-source software.
• Experience with Linux gaming stack (including Wine, Proton, etc).
• Technical expertise on Linux Operating system architecture and device driver model.
• Technical expertise and contributions on Linux DRM subsystem and graphics/compute SW stack.
• Prior contributions on 3D driver development, Vulkan/OpenGL APIs, and contributing to open-source Mesa 3D project.
• Experience with f Al/Machine Learning tools and workflow.
• Experience architecting overall end-to-end Linux solutions.

We can see a real smorgasbord of desired expertise here, including AI, machine learning, C/C++, and 3D development. However, the second point explicitly asks for people who have experience with the Linux gaming stack, meaning that the company is likely trying to rekindle the ashes from the 2025 layoffs and begin making something for Linux gamers to enjoy.

The company is likely doing this due to a very recent shift in attitude toward gaming on Linux. The co-founder of Good Old Games (GOG) recently went on record to say that Linux was the next major frontier for gaming, and even confirmed that work was already underway on a Linux-native version of its optional launcher, GOG Galaxy. Plus, there was the announcement of the Open Gaming Collective earlier this year, where FOSS devs banded together to better help each other develop games for Linux.