Collabora's Work On Extending The Linux Kernel To Better Support Windows Gaming

Windows gaming on Linux got some love this week at the Linux Foundation's Open-Source Summit Europe virtual event. In particular, a recap of the work that's been done so far on extending the Linux kernel to better support Wine / Steam Play based support for Windows games running on Linux.

Gabriel Krisman Bertazi as an engineer for consulting firm Collabora talked about their work in recent years on improving the Linux kernel for supporting Valve's needs around running Windows games on Linux with Steam Play. Collabora has been one of Valve's partners for this effort along with CodeWeavers and Valve employing various developers on improving the Linux graphics stack, etc.

The work covered during this presentation were their work on supporting optional case-insensitive file/directory handling on Linux file-systems, thread synchronization improvements that are still in the works with futex2, and their more recent focus on system call emulation or syscall user redirection abilities. The system call redirection support they are hoping to see land in Linux 5.11, but besides that the presentation was mostly recapping their previously known work across these areas to better support Windows gaming on Linux for Steam Play (Proton) / Wine.

Those curious and wanting to learn more about these topics can see this PDF slide deck from the Open-Source Summit Europe 2020 presentation.