Wine 3.13 released, run Windows applications on Linux, macOS, and BSD

Wine (the abbreviation of “Wine Is Not an Emulator”) is a compatible layer that can run Windows applications on a variety of POSIX-compliant operating systems such as Linux, macOS, and BSD. Wine is not like a virtual machine or simulator imitate the same internal Windows logic, but the Windows API call translated into a dynamic POSIX call, eliminating the performance and other behavior of the memory footprint, so you can clearly set the Windows application to your desktop.

Wine Features

Binary Compatibility

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

Graphics

• X11-based graphics allows remote display to any X terminal
• macOS and Android-based graphics support
• X11, TrueType (.ttf/.ttc) and Windows Bitmap (.fon) Fonts
• Support for DirectX based games and applications (Direct3D support up to DX11)
• Support for OpenGL based games and applications
• 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
• Windows MultiMedia (WinMM) layer support with built-in codecs

Allows Windows program to interface with:

• 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)

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

Changelog v3.13

• Vulkan support on macOS using MoltenVK.
• Initial support for performance data in the registry.
• Mono engine updated with some bug fixes.
• Support for fetching BIOS information on Linux.
• GnuTLS also used on macOS when available.
• Improvements in the standard Task Dialog.
• Various bug fixes.

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