The 2010s Were Very Successful For Wine Thanks To CodeWeavers + Valve's Steam Play

Written by Michael Larabel in WINE on 26 December 2019 at 06:23 PM EST. 68 Comments
WINE
The 2010s were great for the long-standing Wine project that allows Windows games/applications to run near effortlessly on Linux, macOS, and similar platforms. CodeWeavers' investments into Wine continue turning out very well for the continued success and now with Valve's Steam Play built upon the Wine-based Proton, more Linux gamers are happier than ever.

In reliving some of the most prominent Wine moments of the 2010s, here is a look at the most viewed Wine articles out of the 600+ we've written since 2010.

Wine On Android Is Coming For Running Windows Apps
A port of the Wine software to Google's Android platform is being worked on.

Valve Rolls Out Wine-based "Proton" For Running Windows Games On Linux
Valve has today announced a new version of Steam Play that allows Linux gamers to enjoy Windows games on Linux via their new Wine-based Proton project.

Wine On Android Is Making Progress, Running Solitaire
Last year was the last time we had a chance to talk about Wine on Android for running Windows programs on Google's mobile operating system. While it's not quite mainline yet, Wine on Android has been making much progress and can now run Windows' Solitaire game on your Android device.

It's Now Possible To Play Netflix Natively On Linux Without Wine Plug-Ins
Going back for a few years it's been possible to play Netflix movies on Linux using some hacks like with running Microsoft Silverlight on a modified version of Wine. More recently, Pipelight has been working out well as a easy-to-use solution for getting Netflix movies to play on Linux web-browsers, albeit it's still not a native experience. Fortunately, times are quickly changing.

Gaming On Wine: The Good & Bad Graphics Drivers
If you're wondering what graphics hardware / driver is best if you intend to do much gaming within Wine or CrossOver on Linux, a CodeWeavers' developer responsible for much of the Direct3D layer spoke about his experiences with gaming on Wine for the best results.

With Wine Git, You Can Run The D3D11 Blizzard Overwatch Game On Linux
Wine has long been working on its Direct3D 11 support, but it's not quite ready for major Windows games with the upcoming Wine 2.0 release. With some work that didn't make the cut for Wine 2.0, Blizzard's Overwatch game appears to be running well.

The New Feature Highlights For The Upcoming Wine 2.0
Now that Wine 2.0 is under a feature freeze with Wine 2.0-rc1 having been released, I spent some time this Sunday looking back at the new features added during the Wine 1.9 development series.

Direct3D Performance Improvements Coming To Wine
Stefan Dösinger of CodeWeavers has been working on some Direct3D performance improvements for Wine by creating a separate command stream / worker thread for WineD3D. This work moves OpenGL calls into a seperate thread in order to improve performance while also fixing some outstanding bugs. This work can yield 50~100% performance improvements and in some cases making the games under Wine faster than on Windows.

Some Linux Gamers Using Wine/DXVK To Play Blizzard's Overwatch Banned - Updated
Multiple individuals are reporting that they have been just recently banned by Blizzard for playing their games -- seemingly Overwatch is the main title -- when using Wine with the DXVK D3D11-over-Vulkan translation layer.

Wine's Big Command Stream D3D Patch-Set Updated
It's been a while since last having anything to report on with the planned patch-set for Wine that provides significant Direct3D performance improvements via work on the D3D command stream. Fortunately, the patches have been updated and now offer better support as well.

Setting Performance Expectations For Wine Direct3D
For those that haven't dabbled with upstream Wine lately and aren't sure of what's realistic performance expectations for Wine when dealing with its Direct3D layer for Linux OpenGL graphics drivers, here's some fresh comments from a CodeWeavers employee who deals with Wine's graphics stack.

The Features To Look Forward To With Wine 3.0
Yesterday it was confirmed that Wine 3.0 will enter its code freeze next week and begin with the release candidates until the official v3.0.0 milestone is ready sometime around mid-January. Here's a recap of all the Wine developments for 2017 if you are curious about all the features and improvements to be found in this big update.

Wine Developers Appear Quite Apprehensive About Ubuntu's Plans To Drop 32-Bit Support
It's looking like the plans announced by Canonical this week to drop their 32-bit packages/libraries beginning with Ubuntu 19.10 will be causing problems for the Wine camp at least in the near-term until an adequate solution is sorted out for providing their 32-bit Wine builds to Ubuntu users.

Features For The Upcoming Wine 1.6 Release
Tagged on Friday was the first Wine 1.6 release candidate. For those curious about what will be found in this major release of Wine, in this article is a feature overview of Wine 1.6.

Wine 2.0 Coming In December~January: DirectX 11 Support Ongoing, No Android Support
With Wine having moved to annual, time-based releases, the code freeze is indeed imminent for the next stable release, Wine 2.0.

Wine 1.9.14 Still Working On Shader Model 5, D3D Command Stream
Wine 1.9.14 was released today as the newest bi-weekly Wine development release for running your favorite Windows games/applications on Linux and other operating systems.

Wine 4.0 Release Preparations Begin For Much Improved Windows Games / Apps On Linux
Wine founder and lead developer Alexandre Julliard has laid out the release plans around the upcoming Wine 4.0 stable release for delivering a year's worth of improvements for running Windows games/applications on Linux, BSDs, and macOS.

Why Wine Developers Don't See Gallium3D D3D9 As An Option
While many Linux gamers are excited about the Gallium3D Direct3D 9 state tracker for offering better Windows gaming performance on Linux with the open-source drivers, the patches on the Wine side haven't been accepted upstream. Here's some clarification from one of the leading Wine developers on the graphics front to explain the opposition to the work.

Wine 1.7.11 Has Optional Start Menu, D3D CS Work
Wine 1.7.11 has been released and it packs a fair number of changes.

Wine 1.6 Released With 10,000+ Changes
After a slew of release candidates, Wine 1.6 was officially released today. The Wine 1.6 release comes just one year after the Wine 1.4 stable release but it packs in about 10,000 individual changes.

Wine's Performance For Direct3D Gaming With Many Drivers
Here's a look at Wine's performance over time with various Linux graphics drivers along with a look at the current performance impact of the Direct3D command submission work.

Linux 5.4 To Fix Many Newer 64-bit Windows Games On Wine / Steam Play
A kernel patch from CodeWeavers is landing in the Linux 5.4 kernel and will help some 64-bit Windows games run nicely under Wine (and the likes of CrossOver / Valve's Proton) with newer Intel and AMD systems.

Support For Running Windows Apps On ARM With Wine
Right before Wine on Android was shown for running Windows applications on Google's Android operating system, the state of Wine for the ARM architecture was talked about. There's a few different Wine ARM scenarios possible, including the ability to run Win32 binaries on a Linux-based ARM system.

Cedega To Be Replaced By GameTree Linux Software
Here's something interesting, but all of the details are not yet known at this time as the official announcement doesn't seem to have been issued yet. TransGaming, the company behind the Cedega software for running Windows games on Linux, is going to be replacing the Cedega Gaming Service with something now called GameTree Linux.

Wine 4.0 Officially Released With Vulkan Support, Initial Direct3D 12 & Better HiDPI
Wine 4.0 is now officially available as the new annual stable release to Wine for running Windows programs and games on Linux and other operating systems.
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About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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