Lots of fixes have been implemented in this latest release

Nov 15, 2014 22:02 GMT  ·  By

Wine developers have announced that a new version of the application has been released and it brings a number of interesting features that include a new version of the Gecko engine, which is based on Firefox 34.

Not all of the Wine updates are important and some of them are downright boring, but from time to time the developers provide some big changes and improvements. The current version, 1.7.31, features a new Gecko engine and support for Visual Studio 2013.

These are just a couple of the new features in the new release, but users will also find font metrics support in DirectWrite, more Direct2D improvements, and a lot of bugfixes. As usual, these are just the major modifications, but a lot of changes are all about fixes applications and games. Each new release increases the list of apps that run on Linux or that are at least signals that fact that they are being worked on.

Wine 1.7.31 will catch the gamer's eye

Users have been expecting to see a stable Wine release, but it seems that's not happening just yet. From the large number of fixes added in this release it still looks like there is more work to be done.

Wine 1.7.31 brings bug fixes for the following Windows games and tools: GRE Powerprep Software,  Warhammer: Dark Omen, Microsoft Crimson Skies, ShipSimulator 2008, Google Sketchup 7/8, Hinterland, World of Warcraft, Alien Swarm, Bionic Commando: Rearmed, Virtual Sailor 7, MiPony, VMWare vSphere Client, Hamster Free eBook Converter, Solidworks 2012, Final Fantasy XIV, Hoyle Casino 2011, The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing, Watch Dogs, Behringer X-32, Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth, Silverlight, and Altap Salamander.

Wine (which stands for wine is not an emulator) can be usually found in every major repository, but only the stable version. Users can easily install the development build of Wine with the help of a PPA. This can be done by opening a terminal and entering these commands in a terminal (root is needed):

code
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wine
More details about this release can be found in the official changelog. You can download Wine 1.7.31 source packages right now from Softpedia. It's possible to compile the package by yourself, but there are quite a few dependencies and it will take a while.

Also, please keep in mind that if the applications you need already work with the stable version of Wine, then you should postpone upgrading to the new one.

Photo Gallery (7 Images)

Diablo 3 running in Wine
Wine applicationsWine libraries
+4more