14 DAY TRIAL // Just a few moments ago, Alexandre Julliard announced the release of the third RC (Release Candidate) build of the upcoming Wine 1.8 open-source and free implementation of Windows on Unix and GNU/Linux operating systems.
According to the internal changelog, attached at the end of the article for reference, Wine 1.8 is now in code freeze, which means that this third Release Candidate version brings only fixes for some of the most annoying issues reported by users since the previous RC build.
As usual with any new release of Wine, many Windows applications received improvements. Wine 1.8 RC3 brings fixes for the Microsoft Access Snapshot Viewer 10.0, Exposure 3.0, AVRStudio 4, ffdshow A/V config tool, Microsoft Software Jukebox, and Microsoft Word 2007 software.
Additionally, the EarthQuake3D, Gif Movie Gear 2.63, AVISave, Git 2.6.3, Eclipse (Europa), TI Derive 6, SQLBindCol, Microsoft Paint, TGB Dual 8.3, and PCB123 2.1.0.7000 applications also got various improvements, which means that they should work a lot better now.
Many Windows games received fixes
In addition to the updated Windows applications listed above, the third Release Candidate of Wine 1.8 also patches many issues for some of the most important Windows games, among which we can mention Need for Speed 2 SE, MechCommander 2, Soldier of Fortune II, Black and White 2 1.2, and GTA4.
Moreover, SiN Gold, Red Faction Guerilla, Paranormal State: Poison Spring, Gazillionaire, Alex Hunter, the Spider Solitaire game for Windows XP, and Memory Blocks for Windows 3.x were also improved in Wine 1.8 RC3, which you can download right now for all GNU/Linux operating systems from our website.
Please note that this is a pre-release of Wine 1.8, which means that some features are incomplete, and some known bugs have not yet been fixed. Therefore, we do not recommend installing this version in production environments where stability is of the essence.