WINE News Archives

The Wine project's VKD3D initiative for translating Direct3D 12 support to Vulkan took another step forward today with patches for handling DXIL (Shader Model 6.0+) shaders with VKD3D, but the work in the current form may need to be re-worked.

With Wine 5.0 having released and the Git tree back open for feature work, we're quite looking forward to see what new material will land following this feature freeze that was in effect the past two months.

One of the features that didn't materialize in time for Wine 5.0 as the annual stable Wine release was the work-in-progress Vulkan back-end to WineD3D. Rather than going from Direct3D to OpenGL as WineD3D currently does, there has been efforts to introduce a Vulkan back-end similar to the likes of DXVK.

Given yesterday's release of Wine 5.0 I was curious to run some development stats on Wine Git as of the 5.0 release tag for seeing how development is trending on this wildly popular program among Linux users especially for running Windows games and applications.

Wine 5.0 has been released as stable as the annual timed release of this software for running Windows games and applications on Linux, macOS, and other platforms.

We'll likely see the Wine 5.0 stable release next week or the following week, but for now Wine 5.0-RC6 is available as the newest weekly release candidate.

Wine 5.0 is still going through weekly release candidates but the stable release of Wine 5 is expected to land in the back-half of January. With that imminent release, here is a look at the big changes to find with this annual Wine update.

Wine-Staging 5.0-RC5 is out today as usual, arriving just one day after the upstream Wine 5.0-rc5 release.

We are likely to see the stable Wine 5.0 release within the next week or two but for now Wine 5.0-RC5 is available for the latest testing.

While complicated by New Year's festivities, Wine 5.0-RC4 was released today with just fifteen bug fixes for the week -- also a sign of the development cycle winding down for this annual Wine stable release.

Based on Wine 5.0-RC3 released yesterday is now Wine-Staging 5.0-RC3 with its 800+ patches on top and it comes with two new additions this week.

Even with the Christmas holiday slowing down the rate of changes for some of the developers, this week's Wine 5.0 release candidate managed to arrive with 46 bug fixes.

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.

Rebased off yesterday's Wine 5.0-RC2 source tree is now Wine Staging 5.0-RC2 as this testing/experimental variation of Wine with some 830+ patches on top.

Following last week's code freeze and subsequent Wine 5.0-rc1, the second weekly release candidate is now available for testing of the forthcoming Wine 5.0.

With yesterday's release of Wine 5.0-RC1 as the last feature release prior to the code freeze for this forthcoming annual Wine stable release, a number of the patches merged came via way of Wine-Staging.

As was expected, today marks the first release candidate of Wine 5.0 that ushers in the code freeze ahead of this annual stable update for running Windows programs and games on Linux and other platforms.

CodeWeavers has announced the availability of CrossOver 19 for their Wine-based software for running Windows programs/applications/games on macOS and Linux.

As expected by Wine's annual release cadence, next week Wine 5.0 will enter its code freeze followed by release candidates until this next stable Wine release is ready to ship around early 2020.

Built off yesterday's release of Wine 4.21 is now a new Wine-Staging release that continues shipping over 800 patches on top of upstream Wine for offering an experimental/testing blend that often works out much better for gaming on Linux.

Wine 4.21 is out today as the newest bi-weekly development release as the feature freeze approaches for the Wine 5.0 release in early 2020.

Coming up this weekend with the Linux 5.4 kernel is emulation/spoofing of the SGDT/SIDT/SMSW instructions around UMIP for allowing newer 64-bit Windows games to run on Wine and Steam Play (Proton). With newer CPUs like the AMD Ryzen 3000 series that support UMIP, these instructions are not allowed to run in user-space with Wine due to UMIP. So while the first stable kernel release is about to land with this support, some Wine-based emulation not contingent on the kernel patches is also in the works.

CodeWeavers' Jeremy White has announced that CrossOver 19 is now in beta for existing customers of this Wine-based software for running Windows programs on Linux and macOS.

Wine 4.20 came out last night while out today is Wine-Staging 4.20 as this experimental blend of Wine with more than eight-hundred extra patches on top.

Wine 4.20 is out today as the newest bi-weekly development snapshot for this open-source project allowing Windows games and applications to run on Linux and other non-Microsoft platforms.

CodeWeavers is looking to hire another developer to work on Wine's graphics stack and in particular the WineD3D code while having an emphasis that it's part of Valve's Steam Play (Proton) efforts.

With DXVK in remarkably good standing for translating Direct3D 10/11 to Vulkan for use by Steam Play (Proton) and Wine, Philip Rebohle who started that project is now contributing more to Wine's VKD3D initiative for mapping Direct3D 12 on Vulkan.

Fresh off last night's Wine 4.19 uncorking, Wine-Staging 4.19 is out as the experimental blend of Wine with more than 800 patches for experimental/testing patches atop the upstream code-base for running Windows games/applications on Linux and other platforms.

Wine 4.19 is out today as the project's first development release for November and as we get quite close to the feature freeze / RC period for Wine 5.0 that will be out in early 2020.

CodeWeavers' Derek Lesho has been working on Vulkan shared memory support for Wine to expose some interesting use-cases.

Fresh off yesterday's Wine 4.18 release, Wine-Staging 4.18 is now available for those preferring the more experimental blend of Wine that incorporates various testing patches atop Wine.

While three weeks have passed since the previous Wine development release compared to the usual two week cadence, Wine 4.18 is out today and isn't too busy on the feature front but there are more than three dozen bug fixes.

Wine-Nine-Standalone is the project making it easier to make use of Gallium3D's Direct3D 9 state tracker within Wine. Wine-Nine-Standalone 0.5 is out as the first new release since March for this project making it easier to use the Direct3D 9 Gallium state tracker within Wine.

Wine 4.17 was released yesterday that merged the DXTn support and other improvements from Wine-Staging. Meanwhile Wine-Staging 4.17 is out today to re-up their game with now more than 850 patches in total against upstream Wine.

Wine 4.17 has been uncorked for weekend testing as the newest bi-weekly feature development release of this open-source project for running Windows games/applications on Linux and other platforms.

Based off yesterday's release of Wine 4.16, the Wine-Staging 4.16 update out today is more prominent with a number of new patches introduced to this experimental/testing flavor of Wine for running Windows games/applications on Linux.

Wine 4.16 is out as the newest bi-weekly development snapshot leading up to the Wine 5.0 release in just a few more months.

Based off Friday's Wine 4.15, Wine-Staging 4.15 is now available that has its 800+ existing patches while adding a number of new patches and updating functionality for some of the existing feature patches.

Wine 4.15 is out for testing this US holiday weekend. With Wine 4.15 it brings an initial implementation of Windows' HTTP.sys as the HTTP protocol stack that is a kernel-mode driver that lists for HTTP requests and passes it onto Microsoft's IIS.

Wine 4.0.2 is out today as the second stable point release to this year's Wine 4.0 cycle.

Re-based against yesterday's Wine 4.14 release, Wine-Staging 4.14 is now available with nearly 850 extra patches.

Wine 4.14 was released earlier today as the newest bi-weekly point release for running Windows games and applications on Linux and other operating systems.

Hot on the heels of the upstream Wine 4.13 release following a long summer retreat, Wine-Staging 4.13 is now available with the latest testing/experimental patches re-based atop the newest Wine code.

Wine 4.12 was released back on 5 July while finally today has been succeeded by Wine 4.13, which is normally seeing updates on a two-week release cycle.

Wine's bi-weekly development snapshots do not normally see point releases, but this time around there's an immediate bug fix release to Friday's Wine 4.12.

Hot off yesterday's Wine 4.12 release, the Wine-Staging crew has announced their v4.12 release that is carrying more than 800 patches atop upstream Wine.

Wine 4.12 is now available as the newest bi-weekly development release of this program for running Windows software on Linux.

Just hours after releasing Wine 4.11, the team maintaining the experimental/testing version of Wine -- Wine-Staging -- issued their release with more than 800 patches re-based on top.

Wine 4.11 is out tonight as the latest bi-weekly development release for running Windows games/applications on Linux and other platforms.

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.