Severe visual bug on Linux Mint: missing textures and glitched mobs

The bug

Introduction

This is my first time trying version 1.21.6 of Minecraft, and I ran into a serious visual bug that makes the game completely unplayable on my system.

Right after loading into a world — literally after one or two seconds — all the item, mob, and player textures disappear or glitch out. Everything goes blank or broken:

• Items don't show up in the inventory

• Mobs are invisible or flickering

• My character skin is broken or missing

• Most of the game world becomes unrendered or full of graphical glitches

What I tried so far

• Tested with and without performance mods

• Verified and reinstalled the version

• Updated my graphics drivers

• Tried both the official and third-party launchers

• Switched between different Java versions (OpenJDK, Oracle)

• Other versions of Minecraft (like 1.21.5) work fine on the same system

Conclusion

This issue seems specific to 1.21.6 and Linux systems. My guess is it might be:

• A rendering bug related to Mesa drivers or AMD GPUs

• A corrupted or broken texture/resource package in the Linux version

• Something changed in the graphics engine or rendering pipeline in this release that doesn't play well with Linux setups

I would appreciate any insights or fixes. I am just posting this in case other Linux users are running into the same issue.