Linux gaming is getting faster because Windows APIs are becoming Linux kernel features
(www.xda-developers.com)
Unlike in Windows, in Linux the graphics UI concerns are outside the kernel
That's not exactly correct. In Linux kernel talks to hardware and user space driver talks to kernel.
There absolutely is a kernel driver for AMD and Intel cards. It's just there's very clean separation between userspace driver that exposes APIs to the applications and kernel driver (which is part of the kernel, literally) that talks to hardware.
This allows inplementing all sorts of APIs without modifying the kernel driver. In principle you could make Playstation or Nintendo switch graphic API driver in userspace and it could work with existing AMD/Intel chips