Wine 11 finally fixes one of the biggest problems with running old Windows apps
Wine, short for Wine Is Not an Emulator, is a long-running compatibility layer that lets Windows software run on POSIX systems by translating Windows API calls directly into native ones. The latest stable release, Wine 11.0, completes another year of development with thousands of changes aimed at performance, graphics handling, and long-term compatibility.
Wine 11.0 rounds off a full development cycle with roughly 6,300 individual changes and more than 600 bug fixes. This release includes two key changes. One is support for the ntsync kernel module on Linux, and the other is the completion of the newer WoW64 architecture, which changes how 32-bit Windows applications run on 64-bit systems.
On supported Linux kernels, Wine 11.0 can take advantage of ntsync to move Windows NT synchronization primitives into the kernel instead of handling them in userspace.
This mainly benefits multi-threaded applications and games, where lock contention and thread coordination are much more demanding. Single-threaded software is unlikely to see major gains and because some distributions don't load the ntsync module automatically, users may need to enable it manually.
WoW64 support has also reached parity with the older implementation. The newer mode allows 32-bit Windows applications to run on 64-bit Wine installations without relying on 32-bit system libraries, which many modern Linux distributions no longer ship.
Wine 11 features
Wine 11.0 also adds features such as OpenGL memory mappings, SCSI pass-through, 16-bit application support, and proper handling of 32-bit prefixes. The separate wine64 binary is also gone, replaced by a single loader that automatically selects the correct mode.
Graphics and display handling continue to see improvements. The Wayland driver now includes bidirectional clipboard support and drag-and-drop from native Wayland applications into Wine programs.
Display mode changes are emulated through compositor scaling, which helps older games that attempt to force low resolutions behave more sensibly on high-resolution displays. On X11, EGL is now the default backend for OpenGL, replacing GLX and sharing more code with the Wayland path.
Wine 11.0 also improves fullscreen handling for Direct3D titles and expands GPU-related features. Vulkan 1.4 APIs are supported, hardware-accelerated H.264 decoding via D3D11 and Vulkan Video is available, and thread priority handling on Linux and macOS has been tweaked to benefit more demanding workloads. The changes will help modern games, video playback, and cutscenes that rely more on the GPU instead of the CPU.
Beyond graphics, the release includes better SoundFont support for MIDI-based audio, improvements for ARM64 systems with larger page sizes, and a range of subsystem updates covering input devices, networking, imaging, and cryptography.
There are also compatibility fixes for a number of well-known gaming titles, including StarCraft II, The Witcher 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, and Final Fantasy XI.
Wine 11 is available to download from here.
What do you think about the changes in the latest version of Wine? Let us know in the comments.
