Talk:Wine

Didn't want to put it in emulation, as it's not an emulator. Couldn't think which other categories to put it in. Zip 11:35, 24 February 2012 (EST)

Put it in Linux? --Voxarp 08:40, 12 March 2012 (EDT)

Just realized the Linux page had its own section on Wine which ends up obscuring this page, so I'm removing the section from there entirely. The contents of it can be found below, if anyone is interested in adding some of it to this page.

Wine

Main page

/r/wine_gaming

Application Database

Wine (originally an acronym for "Wine Is Not an Emulator") is a compatibility layer which allows users to run Windows programs in Linux. Its main advantage is a wide support of Windows versions ranging from 3.11 to Windows 10, both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. There are multiple versions of Wine each with their own differences:

• Normal
• Staging - Provides additional features such as CSMT which may or may not improve the performance of the game and contains community-made patches which improves the compatibility.
• Proton - A fork of Wine created by Valve and CodeWeavers which includes special patches and additional addons such as DXVK, FAudio, and ESync. It is intended for gaming and does not require Steam to use.
• Proton-GE - A fork of Proton by GloriousEggroll which has FFmpeg enabled for FAudio by default, and all of Proton's patches ported over to be applied to WINE, as well as Wine-Staging and VKD3D. Proton-GE will generally work better with games, and some specific games only work on GE. The ProtonDB will contain pertinent information.
• tkg - Considered to be a "Wine to rule them all!" it contains a large set of patches and features from other community projects to provide the best performance and compatibility for games. It can be easily customized. It was mainly made for Arch Linux and its derivatives, but it is possible to use it in other distributions.
• Gallium Nine - Uses Gallium3D State Tracker, which dramatically improves the performance for games using DirectX 9, as it won’t translate Direct3D calls into OpenGL. So far only AMD, Nvidia graphics cards which rely on open source drivers and Intel graphics using Iris or Crocus driver have a support for Gallium 3D Nine which greatly benefits the compatibility and performance with DirectX 9-based games.

There are many frontends to Wine, which improves the experience with using it:

Name	Release	Notes
Lutris	Free	Can also act as a client for games and emulators. Provides community-maintained scripts for installing games on Wine. Can provide different Wine version for specific games. Can install multiple editions of Wine, including community ones. May be a difficult to manually install a game with it.
Bottles	Free	Provides access to nearly all WINE/Proton's features through a well-thought-out and easy to understand interface. Can provide different WINE/Proton version for specific games, and makes it easy to download a particular older version as it is required for a specific game. Provides versioning features, allowing you to roll back to a known working version of the settings. Provides easy access and guided installation for community provided WINE/Proton editions, such as WINE-GE and Proton-GE. It is available as a Flatpak, which is crucial for Steam Deck users. Offers community installer scripts for nearly all PC storefronts. Does not have nearly as many automated installer scripts as Lutris does.
PlayOnLinux	Free	Beginner friendly Includes precompiled scripts for automatic installation Very slow development The precompiled installation scripts are outdated, along with third-party libraries. The precompiled scripts may even damage your system. It is recommended to use the option to install the software on your own.
Crossover	Commercial	Superior in terms of compatibility than PlayOnLinux Provides patches and improvements which are later on added to Wine Staging Buying the product will also provide support for Wine development
Q4Wine	Free	Moderately easy to use Implemented Winetricks, providing latest version of third-party libraries (Manual update is required) Implemented AppDB for checking the software compatibility on the go. Manual compiling/installing other Wine versions is required for more than one.

https://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-users/2008-May/035424.html
https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11764

This (together with lack of dx10 support) are the 2 bigger problems imo EDIT2017: seems like the only important blocker these days is supporting PUBG anticheat /s

Awesome !
5.1 sound is supported since a couple of hours (thanks to Mark Harmstone's fantastic work)

Next milestones: full hardware emulation (I don't think it's included atm), 8 channel support and closing these

EDIT: other patches have still to come
EDIT2: hardware buffers should be arrived (when in XP mode)
EDIT3: And here's EAX! Together with some miscellaneous
EDIT4: changelog list is here

http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=41636

EDIT: a lot of dx7 stuff was added in ddraw in 1.9.3

Does it act more like a wrapper? Doesn't Wine still have to translate most instructions from the Windows API? Isn't that a bit counterintuitive?

Software running under Wine is using the real hardware as much as possible whereas an emulator simulates all of the hardware.

Wine's approach means much better performance. The limitations of this approach (such as requiring x86-compatible host hardware) don't matter to many users.

Wine is a compatibility layer