The Wine project has been letting folks run some Windows applications on Unix-like operating systems including Linux, macOS, and FreeBSD for decades… and a few years ago, the developers of this open source project added limited support for Android as well.

Wine 5.0 is now available for all supported platforms, and it brings a number of improvements including support for the Vulkan 1.1 graphics driver and support for multiple monitors.

There are also Direct3D graphics improvements, some user interface updates (like minimized windows being displayed by their title bar rather than Windows 3.1-esque icons), and improved support for game controllers and other hardware.

You can find more details on under-the-hood changes and performance improvements in the release notes.

One thing to keep in mind is that Wine is a compatibility layer that allows Windows applications to run on some non-Windows operating systems… but it’s not an emulator or virtual machine. Some Windows programs don’t work at all in Wine — but there is improved support for gaming in this version, thanks to code contributed by Valve, which used Wine to build its Proton service that allows many Windows games to run through the Steam game client for Linux.

 

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