For completion's sake, these are the steps I needed to follow after your instructions:
0. The debuild -us -uc step generates six new .deb packages.
1. Install the six new packages with sudo apt install *.deb. These new packages do not conflict with any of the currently-installed graphics packages, so there is no need to uninstall anything.
2. Add this line to /etc/environment: MESA_LOADER_DRIVER_OVERRIDE=i965
3. Reboot

After rebooting, inxi -G shows that mesa-amber is being used (i.e., you'll see that dri = i965 and mesa version = 21).

P.S. In my specific case, it seems mesa version 22 has nothing to do with the Xorg crashes, so mesa-amber unfortunately did not fix the problem. I'll describe my problem and its solution in a separate thread.

The new mesa-amber packages can be built locally:

Big thanx, it worked flawlessly.

At the moment i'm waiting Debian to act on this case will they decide to put mesa-amber on the Debian repository, otherwise i will come directly here to install locally.

# apt install git build-essential devscripts
$ mkdir -p ~/git/debian && cd $_
$ git clone https://salsa.debian.org/xorg-team/lib/mesa-amber.git
$ cd mesa-amber
# mk-build-deps --install --remove
$ rm mesa-amber-build-deps*
$ debuild -us -uc

I can't test the build 'cos I only have a bullseye system handy but it should work. Post back with any errors if it doesn't and you can't figure it out.

I can always host the packages on the OBS if they don't make it to experimental soon.

EDIT: once the new Mesa packages are installed the build dependencies can be removed:

# apt purge --autoremove mesa-amber-build-deps git build-essential devscripts

Just be careful with that --autoremove option

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo … ug=1006202

So hopefully that will be available in time for the next stable release.

FWIW the package is already available in Arch and Alpine Linux.

The individual driver code can be downloaded and compiled then loaded as a kernel module. The driver has to have the correct APIs for the kernel version though, which is why older driver code might stop working.

How much 'fixing' does an old driver really need besides removing
DRM, bad language support (Javascript/python/dotnet/etc), closed source crap

Also why cant users download a Linux driver as a file
eg   Hardware_model.driver
and install it from GUI/CLI without everything throw into the kernel including the kitchen sink

Why cant we have a server someplace to store drivers that have been extracted from mainline kernel
that people may need and can access at their own choice

With the final removal of the Mesa i915 dri maybe it's time to say Adieu! although i really find it difficult to leave it as usually i break and fix many things on this desktop

This was the news 3 months ago at phoronix
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page= … assic-Main

It means that Mesa drivers will stop supporting i915, i965, r100, and r200 drivers.

Debian/Devuan LTS > Not affected yet <

TESTING/SID

Yesterday, from Devuan/Debian testing libgl1-mesa-dri (21.3.8-1) upgraded to libgl1-mesa-dri (22.0.3-1 and others).
Version 22 of MESA is the start of dropping support for old classic DRI drivers.

Once i upgraded to version 22, i saw that i can't use mpv with vo=gpu, picom --vsync, i got errors from xorg, and a few other graphics glitch.

17.584] (II) Initializing extension GLX
[17.593] (EE) AIGLX error: dlopen of /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/i915_dri.so failed (/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/i915_dri.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)
[17.593] (EE) AIGLX error: unable to load driver i915

Do you have an ancient hardware pre 2012? be careful, next Debian/Devuan daedalus/bookworm release will not have any more i915 dri support. Before locking your old-hardware on the garage, make sure mesa is the version 21.3.8-1 the last to be used.

Bookworm says 21.3.8-1 but infact my daedalus updates says otherwise

0 + nili@devuan ~ $ apt-cache policy libgl1-mesa-dri
libgl1-mesa-dri:
  Installed: 22.0.4-1
  Candidate: 22.0.4-1
  Version table:
 *** 22.0.4-1 500
        500 http://deb.devuan.org/merged daedalus/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

> bookworm Package: libgl1-mesa-dri (21.3.8-1) with i915 support
https://packages.debian.org/bookworm/libgl1-mesa-dri
https://packages.debian.org/bookworm/am … i/filelist

> sid Package: libgl1-mesa-dri (22.0.3-1 and others) no more i915
https://packages.debian.org/sid/libgl1-mesa-dri
https://packages.debian.org/sid/amd64/l … i/filelist

Arch Linux have got another package driver called mesa-amber which seems to be a continuation of old legacy (mesa=21.3.8, opengl-driver).
https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/mesa-amber/
It appeared a trace of mesa-amber aswell at ftp-master.debian. None yt from repository. I just hope this mesa-amber will reach Debian sid/testing so i can remove my workaround below.

---workaround---
Not advisable, This is not a advisable solution, this driver have stoped having updates, for security reasons, other malfunction or conflict that may rise later you're adivsed won't add it manually. Since i have nothing to lose on my old hardware i did it.

I got a copy libgl1-mesa-dri (21.3.8-1) from ftp.debian extracted the deb, i put i915_dri.so it in the place where it was before upgrading at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri (manually). So i restored all i915 dri functions and got back fixed all my recent appeard concerns.

If you want it back.
Do it at your own risk.

Edit, corrected wrong written daedalus