Wine 8.0 is out now, a big improvement over the last stable release with many upgrades for Windows to Linux compatibility across thousands of games and apps. This is part of what makes up Steam Play Proton, the compatibility used on Steam Deck to run Windows games.
One of the major changes here is the conversion to the PE format for various modules. This format is used by Windows, and an important milestone for Wine to increase compatibility with copy protection, 32-bit applications on 64-bit hosts, Windows debuggers and more. Work is still to be done though to finish it properly, as some modules still need to be properly converted.
The Wine developers say they also implemented a "special syscall dispatcher", to avoid the overhead of a full NT system call to minimise the performance impact.
WoW64 was upgraded too, and once the final PE work is done, they say it will then be "fully possible" to run 32-bit Windows applications without needing 32-bit libraries. This is no doubt something many are looking forward to.
Lots of Media Foundation fixes and improvements too that should help audio and video issues across many apps and games, Direct2D upgrades, lots of optimizations for Direct3D and newly supported Direct3D 10 and 11 features are in, better steering wheel support, big improvements to controller hotplugging, better force feedback support, better support of DualShock and DualSense controllers, better support for CJK fonts and so on.
Absolutely lots more you can see in the release notes.
Hopefully later this year Proton will see a full upgrade to the latest Wine release, to give us even more improvements for gaming on Steam Deck and Linux desktop.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: ShmerlI'd argue that most of the time it's pointless to use Wine "release" version, not Debian stable (or any other flavor of it), unless you have some rare use case. Wine's "development" version is a more practical tool to use generally.Why not Debian stable? Any argument you have against the WINE release version would be applicable against Debian stable. Even more so for Debian because even if for some reason you wanted to use a release version of WINE 5.0 on Debian 11, you would not get the latest release version, which is 5.0.5 from 2021, while in Debian stable currently is only 5.0.3.
Last edited by Shmerl on 25 January 2023 at 8:44 am UTC
Quoting: ShmerlNope, because Wine version doesn't need to be tied to Debian flavor, as I already explained above. You can run same latest Wine on all types of Debian if you are using WineHQ repo for it.Yes, by using a different repository, meaning not using Debian stable's version. Why do you do that? Because Debian stable is the problem. If they provided patch-release updates themselves, you would not need to do that.
Quoting: LightkeyYes, by using a different repository, meaning not using Debian stable's version. Why do you do that? Because Debian stable is the problem. If they provided patch-release updates themselves, you would not need to do that.
I just explained above why. "Release" version of Wine is not more stable or useful than development version in the vast majority of cases. I'd argue it's more buggy and less useful becasue bug fixes and features all accumulate in the development one.
And sure. Debian does ship some stuff for stable like backports, but WineHQ repo works for that the best becasue it's focused on Wine and kept up to date in a timely fashion.
Not that I'd recommend anyone using Debian stable for desktop anyway, but that's besides the point.
Last edited by Shmerl on 25 January 2023 at 8:57 am UTC
Quoting: ShmerlI just explained above why. "Release" version of Wine is not more stable or useful than development version in the vast majority of cases. I'd argue it's more buggy and less useful becasue bug fixes and features all accumulate in the development one.Read what you wrote again. Are you really not seeing the similarities with arguments told over the years on why you should not use Debian stable?
Edit: Oh, now you say that's besides the point! See how frustrating it can get when someone replies to you that's unrelated to what you've said? Yet you keep answering to me..
Last edited by Lightkey on 25 January 2023 at 9:08 am UTC
Quoting: KohlyKohlI was playing Warcraft III in 2002 with Wine and World of Warcraft in 2004. I think it has come a long way, though, it was already a great project even in the early 2000s.Yup, I was thinking of mid-90s, actually, when I was using it to run some WfW3.11 simple programs and more often than not, it wouldn't find some obscure DLL library.
Also, Blizzard (or rather - the Blizzard of old, the patriarchal but competent one) always had a great track of releasing WINE-friendly software, or at least cleanly coded for OpenGL.
Quoting: LightkeyRead what you wrote again. Are you really not seeing the similarities with arguments told over the years on why you should not use Debian stable?
No, but I'm not going to waste time repeating the explanation.
Geamandura 25 Jan
Quoting: KnackebrodDoes that mean these changes will also come to proton or is this wine only?
Proton is downstream from Wine so yes all the Wine improvements flow at various intervals of Valve's choosing down into Proton, no worries.
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