14 DAY TRIAL // The Wine development team released today the third and probably the last Release Candidate (RC) build of the upcoming and highly anticipated Wine 3.0 release of the open-source compatibility layer for running Windows apps and games on Linux.
Coming just one after the second Release Candidate build, today's Wine 3.0 RC3 development snapshot brings another batch of bug fixes and improvements for various Windows applications and games. According to the changelog, a total of 24 fixes are included in this new development release.
Among the Windows apps that received improvements in Wine 3.0 RC3, we can mention SlingPlayer 2.0.4, AstroPlanner 1.6.1, Adobe Photoshop CS5, SlovoEB 2.1, Microsoft Money, TMIDI Player, and Autocad 2002. Windows games that should work better include Far Cry, Age of Empires 2, and Pool of Radiance 1.4.
In addition, the Sonic & Knuckles Collection, Regression in Warframe, Wizardry 8, Serious Sam Classic: The First Encounter, and Serious Sam Classic: The Second Encounter games will also work better on your GNU/Linux or macOS operating system when using the Wine 3.0 Release Candidate 3 development snapshot.
Wine 3.0 could be released as soon as next week
The Wine development team promised to release the final version of Wine 3.0 by the end of the year, and it looks they might just keep on that promise. This could very well be the final Release Candidate of Wine 3.0, and we should get our hands on the final release as soon as next week, most probably on Friday, December 29.
Wine 3.0 will be a major release adding support for running Windows apps and games on Android devices, Direct3D 11 support, a new Direct3D command stream, message-mode pipes, and other goodies. It will also set Windows 7 as default Windows version for all new Wine installations.
Until then, you can download the Wine 3.0 RC3 source tarball right now through our software portal if you want to compile and install Wine 3.0 on your favorite operating system. However, please try to keep in mind that this is still a pre-release version that might include some last minute bugs. Check the full changelog below for more details.