Wine 11.6 is an exciting release to make modding Windows games on Linux simpler

Wine, part of what makes Proton run so many Windows games on Linux, just had a very interesting release that will help game modding.

The main highlights of Wine 11.6 are:

• Beginnings of a revival of the Android driver.
• DLL load order heuristics to better support game mods.
• More VBScript compatibility fixes.
• Various bug fixes.

The interesting bit here is the change to how DLLs are loaded. Currently with Wine and Proton, you do at times need to do a bit of a workaround for games that need specific DLLs for their mods. With this change now in place and shipped in Wine, it means that if the DLL company name attached is not Microsoft (so a custom one supplied with the mod or game), Wine will automatically use it over the Wine version.

Hopefully, the end result will be a number of mods for Windows games on Linux / SteamOS will be easier to run, often out of the box with no extra changes or launch options. And, eventually, Valve will pull the changes into Proton so everyone using it with Steam will see the benefits of it.

Wine 11.6 also notes 28 bug fixes for various application and game behaviour.