The Wine Project, a compatibility layer renowned for enabling Linux and macOS users to run Windows applications, has officially released version 10.9 as the ninth maintenance update to the stable 10.x series.
The most eye-catching change is vkd3d 1.16, the Wine-maintained Direct3D-to-Vulkan translation layer. Version 1.16 ushers in initial support for DXIL shaders and early geometry-shader handling. Plus, the Wine team has added EGL library support for all graphics drivers.
On the developer front, there is now initial support for generating Windows Runtime (WinRT) metadata in WIDL, Wine’s IDL compiler. Furthermore, the project has introduced support for compiler‐based exception handling when building with Clang.
On the improvements side, Wine 10.9 includes 34 bug fixes, which span a wide range of applications and subsystems. Below is a summary of some of the more notable ones:
- Printing and Console Issues: A bug that prevented Wine from printing to a newly allocated console window has been addressed.
- Gaming-Related Fixes: Fans of legacy and modern games alike should notice improvements. For instance, the fullscreen mode in 3D Pinball—Space Cadet now functions properly and displays artifacts that plagued Empire Earth 1.x have been resolved. Dyson Sphere Program players on Steam will appreciate the correction of a white artifact in the opening scene and the restored ability to use the mouse after switching windows.
- Application-Specific Crashes: MS Office 2010 no longer crashes on Windows 7‐style virtual desktops, and both Heavy Metal Pro and PL/SQL Developer no longer exhibit printing or memory exhaustion issues, respectively. Additionally, Gigapixel AI (version 8.3.3) once again launches without crashing, and Geekbench 6 users will not experience startup failures.
- Miscellaneous Fixes: Several UI and control bugs have been rectified, such as invisible URLs in TurnFlash’s About window and toolbar controls in 7-Zip’s file manager. In addition, Virtual Desktop mode now resizes properly, resolving issues that prevented some applications from rendering correctly in a windowed environment.
For more information, visit the announcement. Wine 10.9’s source code can be downloaded from GitLab’s project page for those interested in trying out or upgrading their current installation. The binary packages for various distributions are expected to be available shortly.
