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Windows compatibility layer Wine v8.0 has a first Release Candidate out

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Another year is coming to a close and so the team behind Wine, the Windows compatibility layer, are readying up for another major stable release with version 8.0. For those just joining us: Wine is one of the big parts of Steam Play Proton to run Windows games on Linux desktop and Steam Deck.

They do regular development releases usually every two weeks with new features and fixes. However, with a new Release Candidate out, they're going into a code-freeze so they focus on just bug fixing and polishing now.

Included highlights of Wine 8.0 are:

  • Bundled vkd3d upgraded to version 1.6.
  • Vulkan and OpenGL thunking optimizations.
  • More support for print processors.
  • Improved joystick control panel.
  • Long types printf format conversion finished.
  • Various bug fixes.

Their own vkd3d, not to be confused with Valve's VKD3D-Proton, had its 1.6 release only recently that included:

  • Initial support for HLSL compute shaders.
  • More support for HLSL features and intrinsics.

A number of bugs were noted to be solved including issues for: Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, The Void, Ragnarok Online, installers for various games and plenty of fixes to all the miscellaneous parts of Windows the Wine has to translate.

Want help managing Wine on Linux? You can try BottlesLutris and Heroic Launcher.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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16 comments
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mr-victory Dec 10, 2022
Looking forward to Proton 8. Proton has problems with Paradox Launcher (I know, I know) but wine-staging is fine so a rebase should fix the launcher on Proton.
pleasereadthemanual Dec 10, 2022
Bottles is really nice...I hope they fix the issue with Japanese character encoding, however, because all of the games I play outside of Steam are Japanese visual novels.
Liam Dawe Dec 10, 2022
Sounds like some of their work actually decreases performance https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/merge_requests/1667#note_18621
mrdeathjr Dec 10, 2022
Quoting: Liam DaweSounds like some of their work actually decreases performance https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/merge_requests/1667#note_18621

at simple seek affects winevulkan but if you have dxvk in theory must be save

whizse Dec 10, 2022
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Quoting: mrdeathjrat simple seek affects winevulkan but if you have dxvk in theory must be save
As I understand it, this regression is in winevulkan. It affects Windows games that uses Vulkan natively such as DOOM and the later Wolfensteins.


Last edited by whizse on 11 December 2022 at 12:43 pm UTC
fenglengshun Dec 10, 2022
Quoting: pleasereadthemanualBottles is really nice...I hope they fix the issue with Japanese character encoding, however, because all of the games I play outside of Steam are Japanese visual novels.
As a fellow VN player, Heroic works better for me. It's easy to add games (and have the cover appear), it can use both normal Wine and Proton, and dictating what winepfx to use is easy (so you can use the old guide's prefix which is still the best option for VNs in my experience), plus they have a playtime tracker for me to use when reporting to VNDB and HowLongToBeat as well as auto Add Game to Steam.

I think it's fair if you still prefer Bottles, but Heroic is just more to the point for me.
pleasereadthemanual Dec 10, 2022
Quoting: fenglengshun
Quoting: pleasereadthemanualBottles is really nice...I hope they fix the issue with Japanese character encoding, however, because all of the games I play outside of Steam are Japanese visual novels.
As a fellow VN player, Heroic works better for me. It's easy to add games (and have the cover appear), it can use both normal Wine and Proton, and dictating what winepfx to use is easy (so you can use the old guide's prefix which is still the best option for VNs in my experience), plus they have a playtime tracker for me to use when reporting to VNDB and HowLongToBeat as well as auto Add Game to Steam.

I think it's fair if you still prefer Bottles, but Heroic is just more to the point for me.
I think Bottles has a great, nicely-designed interface...although I can't say much more about it because I've never gotten a game to work on it.

Thanks for the Heroic recommendation, that does sound quite nice. I'll give it a shot.
Shmerl Dec 11, 2022
Quoting: Liam DaweSounds like some of their work actually decreases performance https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/merge_requests/1667#note_18621

This sounds like a serious concern. 26% performance regression is not fun.


Last edited by Shmerl on 11 December 2022 at 7:48 am UTC
Shmerl Dec 11, 2022
Quoting: whizse
Quoting: mrdeathjrat simple seek affects winevulkan but if you have dxvk in theory must be save
As I understand it, this regression is in winevulkan. It affects Windows games that uses Vulkan natively such as DOOM and the later Wolfensteins.

I thought winevulkan is simply Wine's handling of Vulkan path. dxvk and vkd3d-proton will have to go through it as well, no?
Klaas Dec 11, 2022
Quoting: ShmerlI thought winevulkan is simply Wine's handling of Vulkan path. dxvk and vkd3d-proton will have to go through it as well, no?

That's my understanding as well. If dxvk dlls are used the game should behave like a Vulkan game inside wine.
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