Support us on Patreon
PayPalWine, 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.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
About the author - Liam Dawe
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly checked on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly.
See more from me
See more from me
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
You can also find comments for this article on social media: All posts need to follow our rules. Please hit the Report Flag icon on any post that breaks the rules or contains illegal / harmful content. Readers can also email us for any issues or concerns.
12 comments
ROllerozxa 2 days ago
Improving the loading of game mod DLLs sounds interesting but what got my attention was the firstmost line, Wine running on Android? 👀
0 Likes
Quoting: ROllerozxaImproving the loading of game mod DLLs sounds interesting but what got my attention was the firstmost line, Wine running on Android? 👀Yep, it was (somewhat) supported starting with the 3.0 release but ending with 7.0. I think the arm build was only able to run WinRT binaries (Windows apps for arm) so usefulness was pretty much limited to Android on x86. That will probably change now with FEX that emulates x86 on arm64.
1 Likes
kaktuspalme 2 days ago
Quoting: whizseI guess it already has changed. I saw so many Youtube Videos popping up on how to run Steam on Android on Ayn Odin and other devices. GameNative and other apps are mentioned.Quoting: ROllerozxaImproving the loading of game mod DLLs sounds interesting but what got my attention was the firstmost line, Wine running on Android? 👀Yep, it was (somewhat) supported starting with the 3.0 release but ending with 7.0. I think the arm build was only able to run WinRT binaries (Windows apps for arm) so usefulness was pretty much limited to Android on x86. That will probably change now with FEX that emulates x86 on arm64.
1 Likes
Quoting: kaktuspalmeafaik they arent using wine but an fork of it, that might not even give credits or source code, im not sure if it does....Quoting: whizseI guess it already has changed. I saw so many Youtube Videos popping up on how to run Steam on Android on Ayn Odin and other devices. GameNative and other apps are mentioned.Quoting: ROllerozxaImproving the loading of game mod DLLs sounds interesting but what got my attention was the firstmost line, Wine running on Android? 👀Yep, it was (somewhat) supported starting with the 3.0 release but ending with 7.0. I think the arm build was only able to run WinRT binaries (Windows apps for arm) so usefulness was pretty much limited to Android on x86. That will probably change now with FEX that emulates x86 on arm64.
in any case now we will have support on the wine itself it seems
0 Likes
AFAICT GameNative et al seems to use proot to run x86 builds of Wine using Box64.
I have no idea of doing it slightly more native will be easier/faster?
I have no idea of doing it slightly more native will be easier/faster?
1 Likes
PlayingOnLinuxphone a day ago
Quoting: ROllerozxabut what got my attention was the firstmost line, Wine running on Android? 👀The least I am interested in since I left the smartphone ecosystem in favor of Linux phones. With FEX Windows games should run on these pocketcomputers just as on Linux desktops. The only remaining key is powerful hardware, which may comes with Liberux Nexx. But older games or low resource eating indie games could probably run on my device. So the DLL stuff is indeed more interesting to me.
But well, nothing against the Android driver.
0 Likes
Gerarderloper a day ago
Is this Android Driver meant as a alternative to Valves FEX layer?
0 Likes
No, it's meant for getting Windows games to run on Android. It uses FEX for ARM compatibility.
0 Likes
Does this mean the WINEDLLOVERRIDES command is no longer needed? That would make modding some games less of a headache.
2 Likes
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.Looks like it partially works for Cyberpunk 2077 mods, but not fully. I was able to remove version.dll override and still load Cyber Engine Tweaks, but winmm.dll override is still needed to load some other CP2077 mod tools.
0 Likes
Quoting: Chinstrap Does this mean the WINEDLLOVERRIDES command is no longer needed? That would make modding some games less of a headache.See above. In some cases you can now avoid overrides, but not always clearly. So experiment and see what works and what doesn't, but it's still an improvement.
Last edited by Shmerl on 6 Apr 2026 at 8:37 pm UTC
0 Likes
How to setup OpenMW for modern Morrowind on Linux / SteamOS and Steam Deck
How to install Hollow Knight: Silksong mods on Linux, SteamOS and Steam Deck