Wine 8.0 has already been released and comes loaded with many new features and improvements

After a year of development and 28 experimental versions finally the launch of the stable version of the open implementation of the API Win32 Wine 8.0, which has absorbed more than 8600 changes.

The key achievement of the new version is the completion of the work on translating Wine modules into the format, as well as confirmation that 5266 programs for Windows work correctly with additional settings and external DLL files.

Main news of Wine 8.0

In this new version that comes from Wine 8.0 the modules in PE format, after four years of work transfer of all DLL libraries has been achieved to use the PE executable file format. Using PE allows you to use the debuggers available for Windows and resolves issues with compatibility with various copy protection schemes that verify the identity of system modules on disk and in memory.

As well issues with running 32-bit applications on 64-bit hosts have been resolved and x86 applications on ARM systems. Of the rest of the tasks that are planned to be solved in later experimental versions of Wine 8.x, the movement of modules to the NT system call interface, instead of making direct calls between the PE and Unix levels, stands out.

In addition to this, it is also highlighted that implemented a special system call dispatcher that is used to translate calls from PE to Unix libraries to reduce overhead when making a full NT system call. For example, the optimization made made it possible to reduce the performance drop when using the OpenGL and Vulkan libraries.

In WoW64 layers are provided for all Unix libraries, allowing 32-bit PE format modules to access 64-bit Unix libraries, which, after getting rid of direct PE/Unix calls, will make it possible to run 32-bit Windows applications without installing libraries 32-bit Unix.

In Direct3D a new HLSL shader compiler was added based on the vkd3d-shader library. Also, based on vkd3d-shader, an HLSL disassembler and HLSL preprocessor have been prepared.

On the part of the input devices we can find significantly improved support for hot plug controllers, in addition to the fact that an improved implementation of the code to determine the game wheels is proposed, based on the SDL library and compatibility with the Force feedback effect when using gaming wheels.

The module is also highlighted WinRT Windows.Gaming.Input that is proposed with the implementation of a programming interface to access gamepads, joysticks and game wheels. For the new API, among other things, support for notification of hot plugging of devices, touch and vibration effects is implemented.
internationalization

Of the other changes that stand out:

• The use of the OpenAL library has been discontinued.
• Added a filter for reading audio and video streams in ASF (Advanced Systems Format) format.
• Removed the middle layer library OpenAL32.dll, instead of which the native Windows library OpenAL32.dll, supplied with applications, is now used.
• Media Foundation Player has improved content type detection.
• The ability to control the data transfer rate (Rate Control) has been implemented.
• Improved support for the default mixer and renderer in Enhanced Video Renderer (EVR).
• Added an initial implementation of the Writer Encoding API.
  The default settings use the “Light” theme. You can change the theme using the WineCfg utility.
• The graphics drivers (winex11.drv, winemac.drv, wineandroid.drv) have been converted to make Unix-level system calls and access the drivers via the Win32u library.
• The print processor architecture has been implemented to eliminate direct calls between the PE and Unix levels in the printer driver.

Finally if you are interested in knowing more about it, you can check the details in the following link

How to install Wine 8.0 on Ubuntu and derivatives?

For those who are interested in being able to install this new version of Wine, just open a terminal and type the following commands in it:

1. sudo apt install libgnutls30:i386 libgpg-error0:i386 libxml2:i386 libasound2-plugins:i386 libsdl2-2.0-0:i386 libfreetype6:i386 libdbus-1-3:i386 libsqlite3-0:i386

2. sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
   wget -nc https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key && sudo apt-key add winehq.key

3. sudo apt-add-repository 'deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ '$(lsb_release -cs)' main'

4. sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-stable