Kernel 5.9-rc2 is out, and brief details of changes since -rc1 are here: http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/2008.2/10710.html

The patched VMware 16 prerelease versions of vmmon and vmnet compile OK, but any further tests will have to wait until the release of Workstation 16 in about a months time..

NVIDIA 450.66 can be made to (almost..) work, by applying the 5.9 patch for 450.57 and ignoring the failed parts, and then applying the mmu patch from here: https://gitlab.com/EULA/snippets/-/commit/d4964dafaa92a93e9f5f9995c83632b466f73fe1

There is an issue with nvidia_uvm:
.............................
[ 2181.632027] NVRM: loading NVIDIA UNIX x86_64 Kernel Module 450.66 Wed Aug 12 19:42:48 UTC 2020
[ 2181.633980] nvidia_uvm: module uses symbols from proprietary module nvidia, inheriting taint.
[ 2181.634069] nvidia_uvm: Unknown symbol radix_tree_preloads (err -2)
[ 2181.634083] nvidia_uvm: Unknown symbol set_cpus_allowed_ptr (err -2)
[ 2181.634097] nvidia_uvm: Unknown symbol mmu_notifier_unregister (err -2)
[ 2181.634134] nvidia_uvm: Unknown symbol __mmu_notifier_register (err -2)

As things stand, there is no recommended fix for this, as the only workaround is to change the licence of the offending code from NVIDIA to GPL.. Hopefully the kernel devs will be persuaded to relent, and revert the patch that created this issue..

Robert Gadsdon. August 24th 2020.