Wine 6.0 is out with better Direct3D support and other improvements

Martin Brinkmann
Jan 15, 2021
Linux
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12

The team behind Wine, a compatibility layer to run Windows applications and games on systems such as Linux or Mac OS, has released Wine 6.0 to the public. Downloads, a compatibility database, and other information is available on the official project website.

Wine 6.0 is available as source code and as binaries. Major changes in Wine 6.0 include DirectShow and Media Foundation support, improved handling of certain game copy protections, and support for an experimental Vulkan renderer for WineD3D.

Wine 6.0 is the first major release in 2021; it follows the one major release per year release schedule of the team that is  developing Wine. You can check out our reviews of the last major releases, Wine 5.0 in 2020 and Wine 4.0 in 2019, in case you are interested.

What is new in Wine 6.0

Work on building modules in PE format continued in Wine 6.0. The format helps deal with certain copy protection schemes that verify that memory-loaded DLL files and their disk counterparts are identical. Wine 6.0 includes a new option to link Unix libraries to PE modules to support functions that the Win32 APIs cannot handle.

The new Wine version includes support for a Vulkan renderer for WineD3D. It is labeled as experimental at this stage as support is limited to shader model 4 and 5 shaders. The team notes that this limits the "usefulness to Direct3D 10 and 11 applications" in this release.

Wine users may enable experimental support by switching the Direct3D renderer setting to vulkan.

The release notes provide instructions on making the change:

  1. Set HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\Direct3D\renderer to "vulkan" to enable the functionality. Other values that are supported are gl and no3d
    • gl = default, OpenGL
    • no3d = GDI
    • vulkan = vulkan

Certain Direct 3D 11 features are supported in Wine 6.0, including dual-source blending and per render-target according to the release notes.

Additionally, graphics card support has improved in the new release as more graphics cards are supported.

Other major changes in Wine 6.0:

  • Support for drawing text using ID3DXFont, ID3D12ShaderReflection and D3DX10GetImageInfoFromMemory().
  • Support for "drawing arcs, ellipses, and rounded rectangles using the Direct2D API" added.
  • WindowsCodecs support decoding images in DirectDraw Surface and JPEG-XR formats, and encoding images to GIF.
  • Vulkan driver supports version 1.2.162 of the Vulkan spec.
  • Improved Media Foundation Framework support.
  • Video Mixing Renderer improvements.
  • Improved Media Detections API support.
  • Text console support is reimplemented.

You can check out the entire -- huge -- release notes of Wine 6.0 here.

Closing Words

Each year, Wine's new version is a major step in regards to compatibility; this year is no exception to that. Valve's Proton is based on Wine, and it too will eventually be upgraded to the new version to improve compatibility with games. Linux gamers who install Steam on their devices can play thousands of Windows games using Proton. You can check out our guide on using Proton with Steam to play Steam games. Proton lags behind in releases when compared to vanilla Wine.

Still, if you are using Linux predominantly but want to play Windows games or run Windows apps on the device, Wine and/or Proton are your best bet of doing so.

Now You: Do you use Wine / Proton on Linux?

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Wine 6.0 is out with better Direct3D support and other improvements
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Wine 6.0 is out with better Direct3D support and other improvements
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The team behind Wine, a compatibility layer to run Windows applications and games on systems such as Linux or Mac OS, has released Wine 6.0 to the public.
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Comments

  1. TacoT said on January 15, 2021 at 9:39 pm
    Reply

    Dual boot is definitely the best and safest option for gaming. Wine is great for other stuff that you didn’t download from warezbay.

  2. TimH said on January 15, 2021 at 6:17 pm
    Reply

    I use XP under Virtualbox in Lubuntu for Windows progs. Everything runs, and only need 512MB RAM for XP to run nicely. VB allows networking limited to host machine only, not to LAN and beyond, so security issues are moot.

  3. Kent Brockman said on January 15, 2021 at 5:55 pm
    Reply

    I don’t mess with Wine or dual booting Win/Linux, just have a second puter( shared monitor) that each OS runs on. My newer box runs Win games and assorted programs and I picked up a dirt cheap older but plenty fast box off Ebay to run Linux. A button push on the monitor and I can be in either OS immediately. If I had more desk space I’d just pickup a second monitor.

  4. Anonymous said on January 15, 2021 at 2:21 pm
    Reply

    I tried to install Wine 6.0 on Ubuntu 20.04 using instructions found on OMGUbuntu!, but I ended up with Wine 5.0.3 and I could only use it on the terminal. There was no desktop icon provided.
    I think, but can’t prove, that unless you have Ubuntu 21 or greater, you can’t install Wine 6.0 binaries.
    It may be possible to build it on Ubuntu 20.04, but I will not try that. WineHQ seems to regard 6.0 as a development release.
    I think that my best bet is to buy CrossOver.

    1. Mr. Stank said on January 15, 2021 at 9:43 pm
      Reply

      Their guide is missing the ‘apt update’ step before the installation.

      1. Anonymous said on January 18, 2021 at 3:31 pm
        Reply

        I finally got Wine 6.0 installed using instructions from Winehq, which seem to have been updated. I also updated the repositories before installing, but I think I did that once before.
        I tried installing with Synaptic before, and Wine 6 seemed to install, but did not work, even in the terminal.

        Sneddon is incorrect about finding Wine in the applications menu. It can only be invoked from the terminal, or right-clicking on a Windows application. That is why many people think that it doesn’t work because they can’t find it in a menu.

  5. possy said on January 15, 2021 at 1:11 pm
    Reply

    “Still, if you are using Linux predominantly but want to play Windows games or run Windows apps on the device, Wine and/or Proton are your best bet of doing so.”

    Hmm, I think this claim is comparatively more accurate:

    Still, if you are using Linux predominantly but want to play Windows games or run Windows apps on the device, then dual booting Windows with Linux is your best bet of doing so.

    Personally, I have Linux and Windows on the same box, but they are separated on different drives, where I use an A/B power toggle to those drives which likewise controls what OS to boot with. That way Linux and Windows are completely separated, which due to security is my “best bet”, without that hassle or limits of any extra software.

    1. Peterc said on January 15, 2021 at 5:05 pm
      Reply

      @possy: I think what Martin *meant* to write is, “if you are using Linux predominantly but want to play Windows games or run Windows apps on the device DURING A LINUX SESSION ….” And even there, I’d add some nuance and say that to run *some* Windows games/apps perfectly, well, acceptably, or *at all* during a Linux session, you would have to run them in a Windows virtual machine — which would take up a nontrivial amount of drive space, RAM, and CPU capacity that some users might not want to spare (or be *able* to spare). For people like me who just miss programs like IrfanView and Notepad++ in Linux, though, Wine is a pretty good solution. (For programs like MediaMonkey and Guitar Pro 7, not so much! ;-)

  6. Chicken Little said on January 15, 2021 at 10:55 am
    Reply

    Do you use Wine / Proton on Linux?

    No, as it’s a security risk.

    @Martin Brinkmann

    Perhaps you should study and then talk about the known security risks in running Wine or Proton on Linux, as such reports are rather alarming.

    1. FUD Troll Allert said on January 20, 2021 at 1:10 pm
      Reply

      @Chicken Little

      “Do you use Wine / Proton on Linux?

      No, as it’s a security risk.”

      What kind of utter rubbish FUD comment is this, who told you to run your computer in a vulnerable way while using Wine?
      How about you better being a little bit more constructive in your rather, as it stands, baseless comment whipping up FUD, just running an OS on itself is a “security risk”, especially if one don’t what one is doing.

    2. CharlieD said on January 17, 2021 at 3:39 pm
      Reply

      It’s a security risk but it could be avoided.
      Flatpaks could (but they don’t want to) and snaps (some already have) can take care of that.
      Flatpaks and snaps can bring win32 in a sandbox, so no security risks there.
      The security issues are not because of wine, it’s because of the way it is delivered in most cases, new package formats can sandbox.
      An example of win32/wine apps packaged in snap.
      Notepad-Plus-Plus
      https://snapcraft.io/notepad-plus-plus

    3. linuxfan said on January 15, 2021 at 12:40 pm
      Reply

      Yes, Wine is a potential security risk. That’s why you shouldn’t run any Windows applications which are not trustworthy.

      But there are ways to mitigate this risk: You can sandbox it with Firejail (https://github.com/netblue30/firejail/blob/master/etc/profile-m-z/wine.profile) or confine it with AppArmor (https://gitlab.com/apparmor/apparmor/-/wikis/AppArmorWine).

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