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Linux distro Fedora 33 may get DXVK as the default for Wine

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If you make use of the Wine compatibility layer on Fedora, it seems the upcoming Fedora 33 release may end up defaulting to DXVK for better performance.

Currently in Fedora, like most distributions, Wine is mostly left alone. Once installed, it's up to users to tinker with it and configure it (I much prefer using Lutris personally). That may change though if this latest proposal is accepted for Fedora 33 which releases in October 2020. There is currently a dedicated wine-dxvk package you can install to get it but this change would set DXVK as the default graphics backend for Wine to translate Direct3D 9/10/11 to Vulkan.

The benefits are obvious, like giving users of Wine a much better gaming experience for Windows-only titles. DXVK is used in Proton for Steam Play, it's developed at a quick pace for game compatibility and the performance is often far better than Wine's own wined3d which translates Direct3D to OpenGL.

See the proposal here if interested.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Distro News, Fedora, Wine | Apps: Wine
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silmeth Jul 22, 2020
It took just about 4 years from first public Vulkan API spec release to distros switching to Vulkan-based solution for D3D translation on Wine by default. I’d say that’s a pretty good time frame for adoption of brand new graphics API.
Alm888 Jul 22, 2020
I absolutely hope it gets rejected.

The last thing I want in the distro I use is some 3rd-party fork instead of upstream version. Otherwise WINE won't have any patches from Fedora anymore, as (rumor has it) DXVK does not play nice with WINE, outright conflicting with its libraries.

You can down-vote me to hell (well, except you can't ;) ), but I am firmly on WINE's side in their conflict.

DXVK guy is nobody and nothing without WINE (he can go sell his library to Windows users for all I care; I've heard it works on Windows™), he is in no position to bring incompatibility in a piece of software that: a) existed long before he even started his project; and b) enabled a lot of critical Windows™ applications to work in Linux (Winamp with its plug-ins, many of which have no Linux alternative, custom-built game resources extractors, banking software).

Prioritizing some custom upsetream-incompatible library over vanilla version is like a tail wagging a dog!

Everyone who absolutely WANTS DXVK-version can go to… Steam and install Proton™!!!


Last edited by Alm888 on 22 July 2020 at 11:40 am UTC
Mar2ck Jul 22, 2020
Quoting: Alm888The last thing I want in the distro I use is some 3rd-party fork instead of upstream version. Otherwise WINE won't have any patches from Fedora anymore, as (rumor has it) DXVK does not play nice with WINE, outright conflicting with its libraries.
DXVK is just dll files. Theres no patch or fork required
Nanobang Jul 22, 2020
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Quoting: Alm888I absolutely hope it gets rejected.

The last thing I want in the distro I use is some 3rd-party fork instead of upstream version. Otherwise WINE won't have any patches from Fedora anymore, as (rumor has it) DXVK does not play nice with WINE, outright conflicting with its libraries.

You can down-vote me to hell (well, except you can't ;) ), but I am firmly on WINE's side in their conflict.

DXVK guy is nobody and nothing without WINE (he can go sell his library to Windows users for all I care; I've heard it works on Windows™), he is in no position to bring incompatibility in a piece of software that: a) existed long before he even started his project; and b) enabled a lot of critical Windows™ applications to work in Linux (Winamp with its plug-ins, many of which have no Linux alternative, custom-built game resources extractors, banking software).

Prioritizing some custom upsetream-incompatible library over vanilla version is like a tail wagging a dog!

Everyone who absolutely WANTS DXVK-version can go to… Steam and install Proton™!!!

I'm not familiar with Fedora, so I don't know how they do things, but --- if this were to happen --- couldn't you get Wine directly from WineHQ and use that? I'm on Ubuntu and I've always done that because the version in the Ubuntu repos has historically been pretty out-of-date. Not arguing, just wondering.
a0kami Jul 22, 2020
What about vkd3d, it might be confusing for users who wants out of the box dx12 app support as well.

Also Winamp, that's a name I haven't heard in decades
bubexel Jul 22, 2020
Quoting: Alm888I absolutely hope it gets rejected.

DXVK guy is nobody and nothing without WINE

Is it personal for you or what? what you have against him? take it easy...


Last edited by bubexel on 22 July 2020 at 12:53 pm UTC
Ehvis Jul 22, 2020
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Sounds like a terrible idea. DXVK is for games and does not work for most non-game software. The default should not be limited like that.
x_wing Jul 22, 2020
Quoting: Alm888I absolutely hope it gets rejected.

The last thing I want in the distro I use is some 3rd-party fork instead of upstream version. Otherwise WINE won't have any patches from Fedora anymore, as (rumor has it) DXVK does not play nice with WINE, outright conflicting with its libraries.

You can down-vote me to hell (well, except you can't ;) ), but I am firmly on WINE's side in their conflict.

DXVK guy is nobody and nothing without WINE (he can go sell his library to Windows users for all I care; I've heard it works on Windows™), he is in no position to bring incompatibility in a piece of software that: a) existed long before he even started his project; and b) enabled a lot of critical Windows™ applications to work in Linux (Winamp with its plug-ins, many of which have no Linux alternative, custom-built game resources extractors, banking software).

Prioritizing some custom upsetream-incompatible library over vanilla version is like a tail wagging a dog!

Everyone who absolutely WANTS DXVK-version can go to… Steam and install Proton™!!!

Wow wow wow!, you went from 0 to a 100 km/h in less than .1 seconds :p

I suggest you to read the Fedora proposal:

Quoting: Fedora ProposalDXVK is available as a wine-dxvk package since Fedora 31. wine-dxvk package uses alternatives system for following wine dll files: d3d9, d3d10.dll and d3d11.dll .

Should this proposal be accepted, a Pull Request will be merged into the wine-dxvk package which ensures it gets set as default backend only on systems with Vulkan support. wine-dxvk will then get added as "Recommends: wine-dxvk" into the wine package itself.

Users can run 'dnf reinstall wine-dxvk' after changing hardware configuration to get alternatives to use DXVK or wined3d updated.

So, it's not that wine+dxvk (which seems to be an already available option) will completely replace wine but that it will be the default option from now on for system that have a GPU that supports Vulkan API.

BTW, I think that this are the guys to blame for this blasphemy: Frantisek Zatloukal & Michael Cronenworth
silmeth Jul 22, 2020
Quoting: EhvisSounds like a terrible idea. DXVK is for games and does not work for most non-game software. The default should not be limited like that.

What do you mean by ‘does not work’ here, that it somehow breaks that software? If so, do you have any source on that? What software gets broken by DXVK? Sure, the emphasis of the project is on gettings games to work, but since it should mostly be a correct D3D implementation on top of Vulkan, I don’t see a reason why it would break non-game software (but I might be wrong, never tested DXVK with ‘regular’ programs myself). I cannot imagine Fedora installing it by default if it broke ‘most non-game software’.

If you mean just that most non-gaming software does not need most of D3D implemented (so it is not used) – the same can be said about many other libs installed with default Wine… If you don’t use it, you just don’t use it. And the proposal acknowledges the possibility to opt-out of DXVK installation.
Ehvis Jul 22, 2020
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Quoting: silmeth
Quoting: EhvisSounds like a terrible idea. DXVK is for games and does not work for most non-game software. The default should not be limited like that.

What do you mean by ‘does not work’ here,

Don't know the exact limitations since I'm not an expert on the matter, but as I understand it, dxvk won't interoperate with the rest of win32. Something that games don't do anyway, but most desktop 3d software does.
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