Wine 4.8 is the new version in development that has been released to be available for users to test. The compatibility layer for Unix systems that aims to make native software compatible for Windows continues unstoppable and progresses step by step thanks to the immense work of the developer community. Now, with this new great release comes very interesting news that we are going to comment on.
Of this project nourish many others, since it not only works on Linux, also on * BSD and macOS, where it also works and even on Android, as we already know. But, as you know, there are other projects that add functionalities to Wine (eg: DXVK) or that are based on it to work as is the case of Valve's Proton to bring native Microsoft Windows video games to Linux through Steam Play, or relationships with React OS, or proprietary and paid software CrossOver, etc.
Well, leaving behind the importance and applications of Wine, let's the news that Wine 4.8 brings:
- Support to build more programs in PE format.
- Unicode has been updated to Unicede 12.0.
- Support for MSI patch files.
- Non-PIC code constructs for i386 platforms.
- Improved support for controllers such as game joysticks.
- Premises for Asturias
- Several bugs from previous versions have been fixed.
Apart from these changes, there are also about 38 errors that have been corrected, and now old bugs that affected some video games or that blocked the software will no longer bother us and we can play video games such as Star Citizen, World of Warships, Warframe, Test Drive Unlimited, Gran Prix Legends and many more titles without those inconveniences. So good news for gamers who also use Wine to run non-native games for * nix systems where Wine is available.