Windows emulator Wine has been released in version 10.0 and brings several minor changes. The software provides active Wayland support by default for using Windows programs on Linux and macOS, optimizes program performance and lets you try a new multimedia backend based on FFMPEG.
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The developers were already expected to make the final push for the Wine 10.0 release on Monday this week, they actually completed it on Tuesday evening. release notes from wine Summarize the most important changes in the new version. In total there were over 6,000 changes, some of which were major.
Extended ARM support and better graphics
The Wine project highlights support for the ARM64EC interface (apps for ARM processor architecture on Windows 11), which joins the previous ARM64 support (Windows 10 for ARM). Support for hybrid ARM64X modules also allows the two code forms to be mixed – but requires an experimental LLVM toolchain. Developers have also implemented 64-bit x86 emulation for the ARM64 processor architecture. However, those interested will have to do this themselves: Wine does not come with an emulation library, but uses one of the registry keys. HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Wow64\amd64 is specified. FEX emulator Provides the necessary interfaces when compiled for ARM64EC. ARM64 support requires systems with 4K page size because the Windows binary interface specifies it that way – it does not work under kernels with 16K or 64K pages (so far).
The Wayland driver is active by default. However, Wine 10.0 prefers the X11 driver if it is also enabled – to force the use of Wayland, the DISPLAY environment variable must be removed (unset). Pop-up windows appear in the right place in most cases, and the driver now also supports OpenGL and automatic key duplication.
Games industry: One in ten developers will lose their jobs in 2024In general, higher DPI support should be implemented more correctly. Child windows of apps can now use not only OpenGL for 3D rendering in the X11 backend, but also Vulkan. The driver supports version 1.4.303 of the specification as well as video extensions. Direct3D support has been fixed, as well as related helper libraries. Alternatively, Wine users can use a new, still experimental mode setting mechanism. Instead of adjusting screen settings, simulates the changes completely. If necessary, the mechanism scales and fills the windows to fit the physical display. If a process crashes without properly resetting the screen settings, they will now revert to the default settings. There is also a Control Panel applet “desk-cpl” that can be used to check and change screen settings.
As an alternative to the existing GStreamer multimedia backend, the developers have developed a new, alternative FFMPEG-based backend. It is experimental and still needs some adjustments, especially when run with D3D. The Media Foundation’s multimedia pipelines are now more precisely programmed, benefiting apps that access individual demuxing and decoding components. DirectMusic in Wine can now also load MIDI files.
Internet and network support has also improved. MSHTML in particular has undergone many changes and is said to have greater compatibility. RPC and COM calls are also fully supported on ARM64. The developers have also implemented process privilege elevation in the kernel – processes run as normal users by default and can be elevated to administrator level if necessary. Since its implementation was broken in Wine 9.0, asynchronous waiting for events from the serial port was reprogrammed. Newer vector extensions such as AVX-512 are also supported.
Programmers have reimplemented Wine’s command prompt input processing to resolve long-standing problems. The “Sort” application is new. “wmic”, on the other hand, has received an interactive mode. The ODBC library allows Windows ODBC drivers to be loaded, in addition to the already supported Unix drivers, for example with libodbc. DirectPlay now also supports network sessions.
The Wine fork Proton, which the Steam gaming platform brings with itself, will soon be updated to the new version. An update is expected for the crossover as well.
Almost exactly a year ago, the day of WINE 9.0 release arrived. What stood out about the version was stable support of 32-bit programs on 64-bit systems using the WOW64 abstraction layer.
(DMK)
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