Wine is a free and open source tool that makes it possible to run many Windows apps and games on Linux and other operating systems including Android, macOS, and FreeBSD. And the latest version brings a number of significant new features and improvements.
Wine 7.0 adds support for running 32-bit Windows apps on 64-bit Unix host systems, improved support for theming, improved graphics, support for using multiple displays while playing games or running apps that make use of Direct3D, and thousands of other changes.
While multi-display support sounds like a big deal, the release notes point out that “in practice, this tends to mean the ability to choose which monitor a Direct3D application will use for full-screen mode,” which is important, but maybe not quite as exciting as being able to span across multiple displays.
The latest version of Wine also adds support Direct3D graphics on newer graphics cards including:
- AMD Radeon RX 5500M, 6800, 6800 XT, and 6900 XT
- AMD Van Gogh
- Intel UHD 630
- NVIDIA GeForce GT 1030
Wine has also added better support for Macs with Apple Silicon, with support for running x86-64 Windows apps under Rosetta 2 and an improved Internet Explorer 11 compatibility mode for networking (which could come in handy for accessing legacy websites, apps, or services that rely on it even as Microsoft prepares to put the final nail in the coffin of IE11).
Many of the other changes are under-the-hood tweaks that may be less visible, but which should lead to better performance. You can find more details, as well as download links for the source code and binary packages in the release announcement.
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