WINE 7.0 released

[Posted January 18, 2022 by corbet]

Version 7.0 of the WINE Windows API library has been released.

This release represents a year of development effort and over 9,100 individual changes. [...] The areas of major changes are:

Most modules converted to PE format.
Better theming support, with a bundled theme for a more modern look.
Vastly improved HID stack and joystick support.
New WoW64 architecture.

WINE 7.0 released

Posted Jan 18, 2022 22:52 UTC (Tue) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (4 responses)

No more need for a multilib mess on the host to run win32 apps? That's probably the most significant improvement I've seen in years! Big thank you to all the devs who got us here.

WINE 7.0 released

Posted Jan 18, 2022 23:38 UTC (Tue) by randomguy3 (subscriber, #71063) [Link]

Once the remaining modules are converted to PE, this will make it possible to run 32-bit applications without installing 32-bit Unix libraries.

So not quite yet, but close!

WINE 7.0 released

Posted Jan 18, 2022 23:51 UTC (Tue) by bartoc (guest, #124262) [Link] (2 responses)

Doesn't this just move the multilib mess into wine? (which probably needs to deal with it _anyway_ since some windows apps may depend on the details of how wow64 works).

It's somewhat unclear to me what the advantages of moving everything to PE are too, I suppose it offers (a lot) less rope to hang yourself than ELF does, and by definition nothing wine needs to reimplement needs any features PE doesn't have.

WINE 7.0 released

Posted Jan 19, 2022 3:06 UTC (Wed) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link]

The PE thing, from what I've read and remember, is unfortunately necessary because Windows is a wild west of awful applications - some legacy and some that should know better - that do deep introspection of other binaries for reasons of varying legitimacy and get mad when the contents aren't what they expect to find. The most obvious example is game DRM.

WINE 7.0 released

Posted Jan 19, 2022 8:37 UTC (Wed) by jdahlin (subscriber, #14990) [Link]

The announcement says:

- For PE modules with an associated Unix library, the interface between the PE
part and the Unix part goes through a standard NT system call. This enables
hiding the Unix code from Windows debuggers, and switching the thread
register on platforms that require it.

Which is mostly likely driven to support anti-cheat solutions required for some games such as Fortnite.