After a year of development and 6 release candidates, Wine 6.0 was finally announced as the new major stable release.
Wine (originally an acronym for “Wine Is Not an Emulator”) is a compatibility layer capable of running Windows applications on several POSIX-compliant operating systems, such as Linux, macOS, & BSD. Instead of simulating internal Windows logic like a virtual machine or emulator, Wine translates Windows API calls into POSIX calls on-the-fly, eliminating the performance and memory penalties of other methods and allowing you to cleanly integrate Windows applications into your desktop.
Wine 6.0 comes over 8,300 individual changes. Among the large number of improvements, major changes include:
- Gecko engine update.
- WindowsCodecs and QCap libraries converted to PE.
- Faster font initialization at process start.
- Support for named pipes with empty names.
- Core modules in PE format.
- Vulkan backend for WineD3D.
- DirectShow and Media Foundation support.
- Text console redesign.
And the release is dedicated to the memory of Ken Thomases, who passed away just before Christmas at the age of 51.
Ken was an incredibly brilliant developer, and the mastermind behind the macOS support in Wine. We all miss his skills, his patience, and his dark sense of humor.
How to Get Wine 6.0 in Linux:
The official binary packages for Android, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Mac OS as well as the installation instructions are available in the official download page:
