Linux gaming [Guide]

General system Gaming, sound and video
112

Wine 6.0

This release is dedicated to the memory of Ken Thomases, who passed
away just before Christmas at the age of 51. Ken was an incredibly
brilliant developer, and the mastermind behind the macOS support in
Wine. We all miss his skills, his patience, and his dark sense of
humor.

  • Core modules in PE format.
  • Vulkan backend for WineD3D.
  • DirectShow and Media Foundation support.
  • Text console redesign.

Summary

What’s new in Wine 6.0

*** PE modules

  • The core DLLs, including NTDLL, KERNEL32, GDI32, USER32, etc. are
    built in PE format. This should help a number of copy protection
    schemes that check that the DLL files on disk match the in-memory
    contents.

  • There is a new mechanism to associate a Unix library with a PE
    module, to make it possible to call Unix libraries from PE for the
    functions that can’t be handled with Win32 APIs.
    These libraries are found by replacing the PE module file extension
    with .so, for instance ntdll.dll -> ntdll.so. They have to be
    located next to the PE file on disk.

  • Winelib modules no longer link against libwine.so, or require it at
    run-time. This is a backwards incompatible change, meaning that
    modules built with Wine 6.0 won’t run on older Wine versions.

  • The libwine library is no longer used, but it’s still provided to
    support running Winelib modules built against older versions. It is
    deprecated however, and will be removed in a future Wine
    release. Applications that explicitly call libwine functions will
    need to be changed to call equivalent Win32 or Unix APIs instead.
    As a consequence, the wine/library.h header has also been removed.

  • PE modules can be built with their debug information split to a
    separate file, to reduce the size of the files installed into the
    Wine prefix.

*** Direct3D

  • An experimental Vulkan renderer for WineD3D is implemented. This
    requires the vkd3d-shader library in order to translate Direct3D
    shaders to SPIR-V shaders. In this release, shader support in the
    Vulkan renderer is limited to shader model 4 and 5 shaders. In
    practice, that limits its usefulness to Direct3D 10 and 11
    applications. The Vulkan renderer can be enabled by setting the
    Direct3D “renderer” registry setting to “vulkan”.

  • The following Direct3D 11 features are implemented:

    • Per render-target (“independent”) blend states.
    • Dual-source blending.
    • Multi-sample anti-aliasing sample masks.
    • Several more capability queries.

  • Support for Direct3D 9 alpha-to-coverage multi-sampling is
    implemented.

  • When the EXT_framebuffer_multisample_blit_scaled OpenGL extension is
    available, scaled multi-sample resolve operations can happen as a
    single operation.

  • When the ARB_buffer_storage OpenGL extension is available, it will
    be used to allocate OpenGL buffer objects. This can result in minor
    performance improvements with some application and driver
    combinations.

  • The Direct3D graphics card database recognizes more graphics cards,
    and the reported driver versions have been updated.

  • New or modified HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\Direct3D registry keys:

    • “renderer” (REG_SZ)
      The backend API to target. This existing setting has an additional
      valid value in this release: “vulkan”. Possible values are now
      “gl” (default) for OpenGL, “gdi” or “no3d” for GDI, and “vulkan”
      for Vulkan.
    • “csmt” (REG_DWORD)
      Enable or disable multi-threaded command stream features. This
      existing setting has an additional valid bit-field value in this
      release. Valid bit-fields in this release are:
      • 0x1 Enable the multi-threaded command stream feature.
      • 0x2 Enable serialization between multiple command streams in the
        same application. This feature is primarily useful for
        applications using multiple Direct3D instances from
        different threads, in combination with OpenGL drivers that
        do not properly support multi-threaded access themselves. As
        of this release, this is known to affect Microsoft Office
        2013 and later versions in combination with the Mesa-based
        Nouveau driver.
        Note that this setting is a bit-field; in order to enable both
        features above, set this to 0x3.

  • Removed HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\Direct3D registry key:

    • “DirectDrawRenderer”
      This setting was previously deprecated in favor of the “renderer”
      setting, and has been removed in this release.

*** D3DX

  • Drawing text using the ID3DXFont interface is implemented.

  • The ID3D12ShaderReflection shader reflection interface is
    implemented.

  • The D3DX10GetImageInfoFromMemory() and related image information
    query functions are implemented.

*** Graphics

  • Drawing arcs, ellipses and rounded rectangles using the Direct2D API
    is implemented.

  • The standard sRGB color profile is installed into the prefix, for
    applications that expect to load it directly.

  • The Null display driver can be used as a proper display driver, for
    cases when a user interface is not needed.

  • WindowsCodecs supports decoding images in DDS (DirectDraw Surface)
    and JPEG-XR formats, as well as encoding images to GIF format.

  • The Vulkan driver creates the JSON manifest and registry entry used
    by the official Vulkan loader.

  • The Vulkan driver supports up to version 1.2.162 of the Vulkan spec.

  • There are a number of improvements in GdiPlus, including support for
    widening lines, more hatch styles, and more record types in
    metafiles.

*** Audio / video

  • The Media Foundation framework is more complete, including:

    • Initial Media Session implementation for state changes and data
      flow.
    • Initial Streaming Audio Renderer (SAR) pipeline component
      implementation.
    • Initial Video Renderer implementation, a pipeline component
      hosting EVR mixer and presenter.
    • Initial Topology Loader implementation.
    • Various fixes for the Source Reader.
    • Initial Media Engine implementation.
    • Asynchronous queues functionality is moved to rtworkq.dll.

  • The AMStream (ActiveMovie Multimedia Streaming) library is more
    fully implemented, including support for streaming and sample
    management.

  • The Video Mixing Renderer supports the following features:

    • Windowless and renderless mode.
    • Automatic stretching and resizing of the video to match the window
      size.
    • Hardware-accelerated color space conversion of YUV formats, if
      supported by the underlying Direct3D implementation.
    • Preservation of video aspect ratio via letterboxing.

  • The Video Mixing Renderer is used as the default video renderer if
    supported by the underlying Direct3D implementation, replacing the
    GDI video renderer.

  • The DirectShow File Writer filter is implemented.

  • The DirectX Media Object (DMO) Wrapper filter is implemented. DMOs
    can be automatically enumerated and plugged into the filter graph.

  • The video capture filter supports reporting more information about
    video formats, including supported sizes and frame rates.

  • More Media Detector APIs are implemented.

  • The GStreamer wrapper filter supports video and audio format
    conversion within the GStreamer pipeline. This obviates the need for
    extra transform filters, and accordingly the GStreamer-based YUV to
    ARGB converter, audio converter, and mp3 decoder have been
    removed. Any video can be output in any of several RGB and YUV
    formats, allowing for better performance in some cases.

  • The Enhanced Video Renderer (EVR) contains an initial default mixer
    and presenter implementation using DXVA2 API.

  • The XACT3 (Cross-platform Audio Creation) engine library and
    interfaces are implemented through FAudio.

*** Text and fonts

  • Text console support is reimplemented, using the architecture of
    recent Windows versions, which is closer to the Unix way of doing
    things. In particular:

    • Pseudo consoles are implemented (equivalent to Unix pseudo TTYs).

    • All console handling is done in the ConHost process. WineConsole
      is now only a thin wrapper around ConHost.

    • ConHost handles VT escape sequences, meaning that the Unix Curses
      library is no longer needed.

  • Default shaping features are enabled for all scripts in
    DirectWrite. All types of GSUB/GPOS lookups are supported.

  • In DirectWrite, CMAP data is read directly from the font without
    global cache or a need to create FreeType objects, for improved
    performance.

  • The font initialization in GDI32 avoids loading fonts through
    FreeType when possible, for faster startup times. The font registry
    cache is also more efficient.

  • The Uniscribe support in the USP10 library is moved into GDI32, as
    per recent Windows versions.

  • An initial version of the Webdings font is implemented, with only a
    few glyphs at this point.

*** Input devices

  • Raw input devices and messages are implemented, and used by
    DirectInput instead of less efficient low-level hooks.

  • An initial USB kernel driver is implemented, based on the LibUSB
    library, to provide access to USB devices.

  • Mouse position history is implemented, for games that want more
    precise mouse positions.

  • SDL controller mappings can be set through the
    ‘SDL_GAMECONTROLLERCONFIG’ environment variable.

  • Plug & Play device notifications are implemented.

*** Desktop integration

  • Display settings are retrieved through XRandR 1.4 if available. This
    also provides support for multiple display orientations.

  • There is a consistent view of the graphics adapters across the X11,
    OpenGL and Vulkan APIs.

  • The desktop work area layout is supported on multi-monitor setups
    using the _GTK_WORKAREAS property.

*** Internationalization

  • Unicode character tables are based on version 13.0.0 of the Unicode
    Standard.

  • Unicode normalization is fully standard-compliant, including support
    for Hangul, supplementary character planes, and IDN normalization.

  • Codepage and other Unicode tables are stored in external NLS files
    compatible with Windows. This makes it possible to test with the
    native files to track down character mapping issues.

  • Codepage mapping tables are generated from Microsoft’s Open
    Specification data for better compatibility.

  • Unicode linguistic case mappings for languages like Turkish are
    implemented.

  • Codepage 708 (Arabic ASMO) is supported.

*** Kernel

  • Windows version compatibility mode is implemented, to only report
    the newest Windows versions to applications that have declared that
    they support them.

  • INI file mappings are implemented, to redirect .ini file entries to
    registry keys.

  • Many more NT kernel objects and functions are implemented, to
    support anti-cheat systems that load kernel drivers.

  • A NetIO.sys kernel driver is implemented, to support copy protection
    drivers that want to access the network.

  • AVX registers are supported in register contexts and exception
    handling on x86 platforms.

  • The Kernel User Shared Data block contains up-to-date timestamps, to
    avoid system calls when retrieving the current time counter.

*** C Runtime

  • The C runtime import libraries provide the necessary runtime support
    so that PE modules no longer depend on the MinGW runtime.

  • The Wine modules are all built against the new UCRT runtime.

  • Winegcc uses the new UCRT runtime by default, unless an older C
    runtime library is explicitly imported.

  • The C runtime supports Windows locales that use the UTF-8 codepage.

  • A number of C runtime math functions are implemented internally
    based on code from the Musl C library, to avoid depending on the
    system math library.

  • Floating point formatting is reimplemented in the C runtime to avoid
    depending on the system printf function.

*** Internet and networking

  • The Gecko engine is updated to version 2.47.2.

  • The WebSocket API is implemented.

  • JScript and VBScript report the correct location for errors in
    scripts.

  • There are various improvements to the LDAP and Active Directory
    Service support.

  • There is an initial implementation of the NDIS network driver.

  • The OLE data link dialog supports configuring the ODBC data
    connection.

*** Cryptography

  • The BCrypt library supports additional algorithms, including DSA
    keys and the 3DES cipher.

  • The DSSENH (Digital Signatures) Cryptographic Provider is
    implemented, and enabled by default.

*** Alternative platforms

  • Support for exception handling and stack unwinding on ARM platforms
    (both 32-bit and 64-bit) should be on par with the x86
    architectures.

  • There is initial support for ARM64 on macOS, for the new Apple
    Silicon.

  • Support for the obsolete 32-bit PowerPC architecture is removed. It
    had been broken for some time already.

  • Case-insensitive filesystem optimizations are enabled on FreeBSD.

*** Builtin applications

  • WineCfg supports querying and modifying the configured Windows
    version through the command line with a new /v option.

  • The Shell Folders configuration in WineCfg also supports the
    Downloads and Templates folders.

  • The removable drive autodetection has been removed in WineCfg, now
    that the dbus dynamic device support is stable.

  • The FSUTIL tool supports a ‘hardlink’ command to create hard links.

  • The FIND tool supports searching multiple files, in addition to
    standard input.

  • The WHOAMI tool is implemented to display the current username.

*** Development tools

  • Winegcc supports generating PDB files when building PE DLLs, for
    compatibility with Windows debuggers.

  • DbgHelp supports GNU-style debug information also in PE files.

  • Winegcc can generate an import library directly when building a DLL,
    with the ‘-Wl,–out-implib’ option.

  • The various build tools also look for include and library files in
    paths relative to the tool binary, to allow relocatable Winelib
    installations.

  • The Resource Compiler (wrc) and Message Compiler (wmc) use the
    external NLS files for codepage conversions. If necessary, the path
    to the external files can be specified with the ‘–nls-dir’ option.

  • There are various improvements in the gdb proxy mode in WineDbg,
    including support for hardware watchpoints, and for loading symbols
    from PE modules.

  • The Message Compiler (wmc) handles the Unicode BOM to detect the
    input file format.

  • The Resource Compiler (wrc) has a ‘–utf8’ option to specify UTF-8
    input, as an alternative to putting #pragma codepage inside the
    file.

  • The IDL compiler (widl) supports a WinRT mode, and various
    constructs specific to that mode.

  • The IDL compiler (widl) supports custom attributes in type
    libraries.

*** Build infrastructure

  • Makefiles are no longer recursive; a single Makefile is generated to
    build the entire tree, with correct dependencies between modules.

  • Automake-style silent build rules are supported. They are disabled
    by default, but can be enabled by passing the ‘–enable-silent-rules’
    option to configure.

  • The new LLVM-MinGW compiler is supported for PE cross-compilation.

  • Building with the Clang compiler in MSVC mode is supported.

  • A ‘-syscall’ entry point flag is supported in spec files, to
    generate NT-style system call entry points.

*** Miscellaneous

  • The Mono engine is updated to version 5.1.1, containing the open
    sourced parts of the WPF framework, and initial replacements for
    some of the closed source parts.

  • Most modules have been converted to use wide-character string
    constants like L"abc" instead of explicit arrays, for more readable
    code.

  • Many of the less common timezones (for various remote islands) are
    supported.

  • Listviews and image buttons are supported in MSI installers.

  • There is initial support for the Print Ticket API.

*** New external dependencies

  • The LibUSB library is used to implement the USB driver.

  • The VkD3D-Shader library is used to translate Direct3D shaders to
    SPIR-V shaders for the WineD3D Vulkan renderer.

  • The Curses, GLU, and Zlib libraries are no longer used.

Very important release, especially for those who can’t play with DXVK due to older cards, it should improve performance or make some games actually work on such systems!

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