Wine is a reimplementation of the Win16 and Win32 application programming interface for Unix-based operating systems.
The launch of the new experimental version of Wine 9.1, which follows version 9.0 and comes loaded with 270 gears, along with closing 42 bug reports since the last stable release.
For those who do not know about Wine, they should know that this is a popular free and open source software which allows users to run Windows applications on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. To be a bit more technical, Wine is a compatibility layer that translates system calls from Windows to Linux and uses some Windows libraries, in the form of .dll files.
Main news of Wine 9.1
On the latest release, Wine has significantly improved its support for several key aspects, as it provides a more fluid and complete experience when running Windows applications and games and it is that significant improvements have been made in function implementation SendInput(), allowing for better emulation of user input. Besides, functions like XInputGetCapabilitiesEx have been added and the XInputGetCapabilities function has been completely rewritten for optimal performance and functionality.
Another improvement that stands out in the new version is that Wine 9.1 offers more robust support for the Diffie-Hellman key exchange protocol, in addition to adding the ability to configure and receive DH parameters, as well as drivers to create public and private key pairs, which improves the security and interoperability of applications that use this protocol.
In addition, in Wine 9.1 Improved detection and support for keyboards using the Dvorak layout, ensuring a more consistent and efficient user experience for those who prefer this alternative keyboard layout.
On the part of the bug fixes in games and applications, it is highlighted that specific problems that affected the operation of several games and applications have been solved. This includes closing bug reports related to popular games such as:
- Polda 1: After the intro image and animation, a black window is displayed
- Lego Racers - Crashes when clicking setup commands for player 1
- Lost Planet: Black screen after starting a new game
- Dead Rising - Find infinite load when starting a new game (needs WMAudio Decoder DMO)
As for the apps that received attention in this release, the following stand out: Visio 2013, Automation License Manager, Blindwrite 7, SIMATIC WinCC, GUIDE 7.0, Unigine Heaven Benchmark 4.0, MAME 0.257, SpeedWave, KakaoTalk, Microsoft Safety Scanner, AVG Antivirus and Windows Sysinternals Process Explorer 17.05, among others.
Finally if you want to know more about it about this new development version of Wine released, you can consult the log of changes in the following link.
How to install the development version in Ubuntu and derivatives?
If you are interested in being able to test this new development version of Wine on your distro, you can do so by following the instructions we share below.
The first and most important step will be to enable the 32-bit architecture, that although our system is 64-bit, performing this step saves us many problems that usually occur, since most of the Wine libraries are focused on 32-bit architecture.
For this we write about the terminal:
sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
Now we must import the keys and add them to the system with this command:
sudo mkdir -pm755 /etc/apt/keyrings sudo wget -O /etc/apt/keyrings/winehq-archive.key https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key
Done this now we are going to add the following repository to the system, for this we write in the terminal:
sudo wget -NP /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/dists/$(lsb_release -sc)/winehq-$(lsb_release -sc).sources sudo apt update sudo apt --download-only install winehq-devel sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-devel sudo apt --download-only dist-upgrade
Finally we can verify that we already have Wine installed and also what version we have in the system by executing the following command:
wine --version
How to uninstall Wine from Ubuntu or some derivative?
Finally for those who want to uninstall this development version of Wine from their system for whatever reason, They should only execute the following commands.
Uninstall the development version:
sudo apt purge winehq-devel sudo apt-get remove wine-devel sudo apt-get autoremove