Wine is your best tool if you have a computer with Linux, macOS, or even Haiku and you want to check out the occasional Windows program. Version 8.0 of the popular tool is now available, and it looks great.

The most significant change in Wine 8.0 is that all Wine modules can be compiled in portable executable format, or PE for short. It’s a big step towards improving compatibility with Windows software, especially copy protection, Windows debuggers, and other types of apps and games that have frequent issues on Wine. It also opens the door for Wine to run on non-Unix operating systems more reliably, and one day could allow x86 applications to run on ARM devices without extra compatibility layers.

As per the developers, this change was four years in the making. It still needs some polishing, though — some programs might still run Unix calls instead of going through the intended NT system call pathway. The Wine team said in its announcement, “The remaining direct calls will be removed during the Wine 8.x development phase.”

And while this is probably the most important change, it’s not the only one. Wine is also improving the graphical side of things, with support for more graphics cards and a new version of the Vulkan graphics driver. We’d recommend you check out the in-depth changelog if you’re interested in checking this out, though, because a lot has changed.

Wine is amazing, and this release is making it even better. You can install Wine 8.0 through the typical process, but version 8.0 might not be rolled out to all platforms and software repositories just yet. Some applications based on Wine, like CrossOver, will likely take a while to update.

Source: Wine
Via: Liliputing