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.

Features

Binary Compatibility

  • Loads 64-bit, 32-bit, 16-bit Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP/Vista/7/8/10 and Windows 3.x programs and libraries
  • Win32 compatible memory layout, exception handling, threads and processes
  • Designed for POSIX compatible operatings systems (eg. Linux, macOS and FreeBSD) and Android
  • "bug-for-bug" compatibility with Windows

Win32 API support

  • Support for DirectX based games and applications (Direct3D support up to DirectX 12)
  • Support for OpenGL and Vulkan based games and applications
  • DirectShow support with use of GStreamer for codecs
  • Direct2D, DirectWrite support
  • MMDevice API, XAudio, WinMM, DirectSound audio APIs are supported
  • Printing via PostScript driver to the host printing system (usually CUPS)
  • Enhanced Metafile (EMF) and Windows Metafile (WMF) driver
  • Desktop-in-a-box or mixable windows

Allows Windows program to interface with:

  • X11-based graphics which allow remote display to any X terminal
  • macOS and Android based graphics
  • X11, TrueType (.ttf/.ttc) and Windows Bitmap (.fon) fonts
  • Sound devices via ALSA, OSS, PulseAudio, Core Audio, etc.
  • Multi-lingual keyboards and CJK input method support via XIM
  • Modems, serial devices
  • Networks (TCP/IP and IPX)
  • ASPI Scanners
  • Windows Tablets via XInput (eg. Wacom)
  • Video capture devices via v4l2
  • HID devices via IOHid (MacOS), evdev (Linux), hidraw (Linux), SDL2

API Coverage and Portability

  • Designed for source and binary compatibility with Win32 code
  • Win32 API test suite to ensure compatibility
  • Compilable on a wide range of C compilers
  • Permits mixing of Win32 and POSIX code
  • Permits mixing of ELF (.so) and PE (.dll/.exe) binaries in one address space
  • Win32 compatible header files
  • Automatically generated API documentation
  • Resource compiler
  • Message compiler
  • IDL compiler
  • Extensive Unicode support
  • Internationalization -- Wine supports 16 languages
  • Built-in debugger and configurable trace messages
  • External memory checker support using Valgrind
  • Sample programs

What's New

  • Wow64 support in X11 driver.
  • Session storage in MSHTML.
  • Unicode regexp fixes in MSXML.
  • IME improvements in Edit control.
  • Various bug fixes.

Bugs fixed in 7.16 (total 20):

  • #29685 Manifest generator (ecmangen) tool from Windows Platform SDK 7.1 crashes due to unhandled facet/regular expression in XML schema (escape sequence)
  • #42857 Can't select a fixture in FreeStyler's fixture editor
  • #43581 Microsoft Office 365 edition of Office 2013 installer fails with 'cache_entry_from_xsd_doc failed to parse doc' (non-standard '\u####' sequence)
  • #46083 postgresql: "Unable to write inside TEMP environment variable path"
  • #51601 Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain stucks on first chapter intro
  • #52329 amazon games app crashes in wine 7.0 rc-3 (winsock?)
  • #52657 Watch Dogs crashes on start
  • #53174 StarCitizen launcher freeze due to heap space issue
  • #53424 Scroll bar not working. was with up to 7.12?
  • #53462 Obduction audio and subtitles for videos don't work
  • #53468 Ragnarok Online's anti-cheat, Gepard, detecting macro usage (false-positive)
  • #53472 Kerberos auth broken since 7.10
  • #53497 d3d8:device & d3d8:device - test_resource_access() crashes in Wine
  • #53542 Hog4PC 3.17 installer VBScript custom action needs IWshShell::Run to return signed type.
  • #53545 Visual Novel Doukyuusei sound loop
  • #53565 postgresql installer 9.3 needs support for default style argument in WshShell.Run
  • #53566 Wine uninstaller fails to launch
  • #53569 postgresql installer 9.3 needs correct string length returned from fso.GetTempName
  • #53587 comctl32 GetWindowSubclass crash in Notepad++ (v8.4.3 and 8.4.4 only)
  • #53589 Saints Row (2022) crashes on unimplemented function kernel32.dll.SetProcessDefaultCpuSets

Read the entire release notes here.